Podcasts about lamda

What happens when you mix Julie Andrews, musical theatre, and a dash of cheeky cabaret? This week, Alexa chats to performer and singing teacher Rosie Williamson about her show What Would Julie Do?—a musical comedy cabaret. Rosie shares how she built a heartwarming, hilarious, harmony-filled show that uplifts audiences and champions mental health causes. Plus: perfectionism, parody law, and why your passion project might just be your best work yet.WHAT'S IN THIS PODCAST4:16 What are the first steps to devising your own show? 10:54 How audiences describe ‘What Would Julie Do?'12:58 Performing as a singing teacher18:23 What's it like working with a friend?20:46 Rights and approvals23:16 How to hire singers26:06 Balancing performing and teaching29:11 Getting the project off the ground33:29 Funding43:42 Should devising be a standard part of theatre training curriculums?About the presenter click HERERELEVANT MENTIONS & LINKSSarah Louise YoungYvonne KennyLeontine HassMatt SamerMindCarers UKDan TurekSinging Teachers Talk - Ep.154 Managing Imposter Syndrome, Low Confidence and Overwhelm as Singing TeachersMandy UKSpotlightThe PheasantryArts CouncilDevelop Your Creative Practice (DYCP)Singing Teachers Talk - Ep.213 Medicine to Music. A Journey Back to A Creative CallingCrazy CoqsABOUT THE GUESTRosie Williamson is a London-based singing teacher, performer, and writer with a background in classical voice and musical theatre. Inspired by frequent comparisons to Julie Andrews—her school tutor once described her as “just like Mary Poppins”—Rosie created What Would Julie Do?, musical comedy cabaret blending self-help themes with show tunes and parody. Her work has been performed at leading London cabaret venues, Brighton Fringe, and Mountview's Catalyst Festival. Rosie trained at the University of Sheffield, University of York, and Associated Studios, and now teaches at institutions including ArtsEd and LAMDA. FULL BIO HERETeaching | What Would Julie Do | Show Tickets HEREBAST Training helps singers gain the confidence, knowledge, skills & understanding required to be a successful singing teacher. "The course was everything I hoped it would be and so much more. It's an investment with so much return. I would recommend this course to any teacher wanting to up-skill, refresh or start up." Kelly Taylor, NZ ...morebasttraining.com | Subscribe | Email Us | FB Group

Sometimes it doesn't feel safe to bring our full, authentic self to work. In this episode, our guest Amy Ewbank, co-CEO of Verve The Voice Advisory Service, shares what's holding you back and the three key elements you need to find and express your true voice in a professional setting.   01:38 Understanding the Barriers to Authentic Voice 02:27 The Three E's Framework: Essence, Expression, Environment 02:45 Essence: Aligning Values and Voice 03:46 Expression: The Art of Speaking and Storytelling 04:35 Environment: Creating Safe Spaces for Voice 13:03 The Importance of Finding Your Voice 17:18 The Power of Community in Voice Development 22:06 Practical Tips for Self-Awareness and Voice Improvement   ✅ Connect with Amy Ewbank:  Verve Company  website Verve Voice Diagnostic / Quiz Amy LinkedIn Lily LinkedIn  Verve LinkedIn  Instagram Handle  Amy Ewbank - @amyewbs Instagram Handle Lily - @lily_lapenna Company Instagram Handle - @verveleaders   Email: To Learn more about joining the Verve Global Voice community email Amy on connect@verveleaders.com to arrange a free discovery call so she can share more about the programme and how Verve can support you in finding and honing your authentic voice.    About Amy: Amy Ewbank is a leadership coach, communication strategist, and expert in voice identity, drawing from her dual background as a LAMDA trained actor and CIPD qualified HR / L&D professional. With a career spanning the creative industries and corporate leadership, Amy has worked at the intersection of performance, psychology, and workplace communication, helping individuals and organisations harness the power of voice for influence, presence, and impact. Amy began her career as a professional actor, performing in repertory theatre, BBC Radio, and Channel 4. She later transitioned into leadership and learning, becoming Head of HR at a UK national charity, where she specialized in talent development and executive communication. She has been featured on Sky News, Channel 5 and The Guardian.   About Verve: Verve is The Voice Advisory Service for courageous professionals ready to master the why, when and how of using your voice. We offer coaching, masterclasses, and community—shaped by our 3 E's Voice Methodology™ - Essence, Expression, and Environment—to help you speak with clarity, lead with presence, and communicate with Verve.   ✅ Free Newsletter: https://assertiveway.com/newsletter/   ✅ Listen on the Speak Your Mind Unapologetically podcast on Apple Itunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/speak-your-mind-unapologetically-podcast/id1623647915      ✅ Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6L1myPkiJXYf5SGrublYz2   ✅ Order our book, ‘Unapologetic Voice: 101 Real-World Strategies for Brave Self Advocacy & Bold Leadership' where each strategy is also a real story: https://www.amazon.com/Unapologetic-Voice-Real-World-Strategies-Leadership-ebook/dp/B0CW2X4WWL/   ✅ Follow the show host, Ivna Curi, on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivna-curi-mba-67083b2/     ✅ Request A Customized Workshop For Your Team And Company:   http://assertiveway.com/workshops Contact me: info@assertiveway.com or ivnacuri@assertiveway.com Contact me on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivna-curi-mba-67083b2   ✅ Support The Podcast Rate the podcast on apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/speak-your-mind-unapologetically-podcast/id1623647915

Koç Üniversitesi Anadolu Medeniyetleri Araştırma Merkezi ANAMED Galeri'de açılan 'Kuşbakışı Filistin' adlı sergiyi küratörlerinden Prof. Dr. Zeynep Çelik ile konuşuyoruz. Sergi, Filistin coğrafyasında geçmişten günümüze süregelen 'kuşbakışın' detaylı enstantanelerini sunarak Filistin topraklarında yaşanan hükümranlık, kolonileştirme ve işgalin tarihsel boyutunu ve sonuçlarını irdeliyor. Kuşbakışı teknolojileri, havadan gözetleme ve uzaktan kontrollü havadan saldırı araçlarına dönüşerek bugün Gazze'nin canlısı ve cansızı ile tümden yıkımını gerçekleştiriyor. Sergiye çok sayıda sanatçı işi eşlik ediyor. Sanatçı işlerinde yeni uydu ve drone teknolojileri verilerinin Filistinliler ve insan hakları savunucuları tarafından nasıl direniş ve hak arama aracı olarak kullanıldığını görüyoruz. 

Koç Üniversitesi Anadolu Medeniyetleri Araştırma Merkezi ANAMED Galeri'de açılan 'Kuşbakışı Filistin' adlı sergiyi küratörlerinden Prof. Dr. Zeynep Çelik ile konuşuyoruz. Sergi, Filistin coğrafyasında geçmişten günümüze süregelen 'kuşbakışın' detaylı enstantanelerini sunarak Filistin topraklarında yaşanan hükümranlık, kolonileştirme ve işgalin tarihsel boyutunu ve sonuçlarını irdeliyor. Kuşbakışı teknolojileri, havadan gözetleme ve uzaktan kontrollü havadan saldırı araçlarına dönüşerek bugün Gazze'nin canlısı ve cansızı ile tümden yıkımını gerçekleştiriyor. Sergiye çok sayıda sanatçı işi eşlik ediyor. Sanatçı işlerinde yeni uydu ve drone teknolojileri verilerinin Filistinliler ve insan hakları savunucuları tarafından nasıl direniş ve hak arama aracı olarak kullanıldığını görüyoruz. 

In a quiet laboratory in Manchester, a quiet revolution is brewing that could dramatically reshape the construction industry's environmental impact. LAMDA, a groundbreaking wool insulation panel, promises to challenge the dominance of petrochemical-based building materials while offering a sustainable, health-conscious alternative.Vicente Orts Mercadillo from Vector Homes and Ruth Marie Mackrodt of Wool Insulation Wales are pioneering a material that does far more than simply keep buildings warm. Their innovation tackles multiple environmental and health challenges simultaneously."Construction is responsible for around 40% of global carbon emissions," explains Ruth, highlighting the urgent need for sustainable alternatives. In the UK alone, 9% of the national carbon footprint comes from manufacturing construction materials.The LAMDA panel's credentials are impressive. Made from Welsh mountain sheep wool, it's fire-retardant, sound-absorbing, breathable, and capable of neutralising volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Perhaps most crucially, it's fully circular - at the end of its life, the panel can be recycled to create new insulation.Currently, between 70-90% of Europe's wool clip is buried in the ground annually - a shocking waste of a potentially revolutionary material. Vicente, a material scientist, describes wool as "a highly technical fibre" that nature has "bio-engineered" over thousands of years.The panel's unique structure comes from wool's inherent properties. Its crimped fibres trap air pockets, providing exceptional insulation. The fibres' scaled exterior allows them to tangle, creating a network that breathes while maintaining thermal efficiency.Critically, LAMDA addresses a significant health concern. A recent study suggested that around 4,000 childhood asthma cases in the UK are caused annually by formaldehyde inhalation from construction materials. LAMDA not only avoids using formaldehyde but can actually absorb such harmful chemicals from indoor environments.The current insulation market is dominated by energy-intensive mineral wools and petrochemical foams. In the UK, less than 0.1% of insulation is bio-based - a statistic the LAMDA team is determined to change."Change doesn't have to come from the top," Ruth emphasises. "It can come from the bottom, with lots of people making the right choices."The team is actively seeking collaboration with architects, designers, and investors. Their vision extends beyond the UK, with potential for global replication using local wool resources.As the world grapples with climate crisis, LAMDA represents more than just an insulation product. It's a potential blueprint for reimagining how we construct our built environment - prioritising human and planetary health.Vicente dreams of a design approach that reconnects people with local materials and their surrounding environment. Ruth advocates for a longer-term perspective that considers environmental and health costs beyond immediate economic gains.LAMDA might just be the wonder that helps us build a more sustainable future - one panel at a time.www.wulltechnologies.comhttps://www.vectorhomes.co.ukhttps://web-eur.cvent.com/event/6f895721-0d82-42d2-874b-3419d89f6ed8/summaryIf you like this, please subscribe!Have you got a copy of the Journal? You can now subscribe to the digital edition or purchase a copy directly from us at the journalofbiophilicdesign.com or Amazon. If you like our podcast and would like to support us in some way, you can buy us a coffee if you'd like to, thank you xWatch the Biophilic Design Conference on demand here www.biophilicdesignconference.com Credits: with thanks to George Harvey Audio Production for the calming biophilic soundscape that backs all our podcasts. Did you know our podcast is also on Audible, Amazon Music, Spotify, iTunes, YouTube, Stitcher, vurbl, podbay, podtail, and most if not all the RSS feeds?Facebook https://www.facebook.com/journalofbiophilicdesign/Twitter https://twitter.com/JofBiophilicDsnLinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/company/journalofbiophilicdesign/Instagram https://www.instagram.com/journalofbiophilicdesign

INTERVIEW: TINGYING DONG. Tingying Dong is a sound designer, composer, and theatre maker. Dong talks about her early interest in student drama and improv and her eventual training at LAMDA, following a pivot from postgraduate economics studies.  Dong has since amassed an impressive resumé, including critically acclaimed work in productions including The Crucible and London […]

Jim talks with Jeff Sebo about the ideas in his book The Moral Circle: Who Matters, What Matters, and Why. They discuss the concept of the moral circle, harming cats vs harming cars, the case study of Happy the elephant, Descartes' view of animals, phenomenal consciousness, Thomas Nagel's bat argument, the Google engineer who claimed LaMDA was conscious, the substrate dependence of consciousness, a factory waste disposal dilemma, animal rescue triage scenarios, probability calculations in moral consideration, the "one in a thousand" threshold, computational constraints in moral calculations, human exceptionalism & its limitations, fully automated luxury communism & rewilding Earth, responsibilities to wild animals, humans as a custodial species, and much more. Episode Transcript The Moral Circle: Who Matters, What Matters, and Why, by Jeff Sebo "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" by Thomas Nagel Saving Animals, Saving Ourselves: Why Animals Matter for Pandemics, Climate Change, and other Catastrophes, by Jeff Sebo Ethics and the Environment, by Dale Jamieson Jeff Sebo is Associate Professor of Environmental Studies, Affiliated Professor of Bioethics, Medical Ethics, Philosophy, and Law, Director of the Center for Environmental and Animal Protection, Director of the Center for Mind, Ethics, and Policy, and Co-Director of the Wild Animal Welfare Program at New York University. His research focuses on animal minds, ethics, and policy; AI minds, ethics, and policy; and global health and climate ethics and policy. He is the author of The Moral Circle and Saving Animals, Saving Ourselves and co-author of Chimpanzee Rights and Food, Animals, and the Environment. He is also a board member at Minding Animals International, an advisory board member at the Insect Welfare Research Society, and a senior affiliate at the Institute for Law & AI. In 2024 Vox included him on its Future Perfect 50 list of "thinkers, innovators, and changemakers who are working to make the future a better place."

AI教父點讚的台廠這麼多，該買哪一檔 小朋友才做選擇，像我一樣全部買 入手00891 中信關鍵半導體 30檔護國神山群一次打包，讓AI成為投資命脈 2月17前買進參與本季配息 趕緊打開券商APP下單去！定時定額也可以 https://sofm.pse.is/74mq62 -- 高雄美術特區2-4房全新落成，《惟美術》輕軌C22站散步即到家，近鄰青海商圈，卡位明星學區，徜徉萬坪綠海。 住近美術館，擁抱優雅日常，盡現驕傲風範！美術東四路X青海路 07-553-3838 －－－－以上訊息由 SoundOn 動態廣告贊助商提供－－－－ DJ：陶晶瑩（飛碟電台） 週一至五 首播 17:00​​​​​​​​​​​​​​-18:00​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ 週六 精華重播 19:00​​​​​​​​​​​​​​-21:00 ※Aaron Pierre亞倫皮埃爾 英國演員，1994年生，擁有牙買加、庫拉索和獅子山的血統，畢業於倫敦音樂與戲劇藝術學院（LAMDA），2018年起參演作品包括：「Krypton」、「The Underground Railroad」、「Old」、「Genius」、「Rebel Ridge」等，2024年在迪士尼動畫電影「Mufasa: The Lion King」為青年Mufasa配音。 ※李浚赫 韓國演員，1984年生，被譽為「黃金配角」和「最帥反派」，2006年起參演作品包括：「大老婆的反擊」、「市政廳」、「城市獵人」、「與神同行」、「秘密森林」、「或好或壞的東載」、「犯罪都市3」、「我的完美秘書」等。除了演藝事業，也熱衷於繪畫，2021年為紀念已故愛犬「爆米花」，開發一款免費遊戲「안녕 Popcorn」，其中人物及美術均由他親繪，發布後躍居App Store排行榜首位，2022年與其他畫家合作，發行同名童話繪本，全部版稅捐贈給動物救助之用。 飛碟聯播網 提醒關心您： ※尊重身體自主權，遇到性騷擾勇於制止，勇敢說不！報案：110，保護專線：113，婦女救援基金會：02-2555-8595，勵馨基金會：02-8911-8595。 ※酒後不開車，飲酒過量有礙健康，未成年請勿飲酒。 ※自我傷害不能解決問題，勇敢求救並非弱者，請珍惜生命。衛福部24小時安心專線：1925，張老師：1980，生命線：1995。 ※拒絕暴力，如遇霸凌請勇於求助，反霸凌專線：1953，教育部投訴專線：0800-200-885，iWIN網路防護機構諮詢專線：02-2577-5118。 ※任何人在依法被判決有罪確定前，均應推定為無罪。 飛碟APP！收聽零距離 ▶ IOS：https://reurl.cc/3jYQMV ▶ Android：https://reurl.cc/5GpNbR ▶ 飛碟聯播網 Youtube頻道 https://www.youtube.com/@921ufonetwork ▶ 飛碟聯播網 FB粉絲團 https://www.facebook.com/ufonetwork921 ▶ 網路線上收聽 http://www.uforadio.com.tw/ ▶ Podcast SoundOn : https://bit.ly/30Ia8Ti Apple Podcasts : https://apple.co/3jFpP6x Spotify : https://spoti.fi/2CPzneD Google 播客：https://bit.ly/3gCTb3G KKBOX：https://reurl.cc/MZR0K4 陶晶瑩 ●Instagram：https://www.instagram.com/momoleelee/ ●facebook：https://www.facebook.com/people/%E9%99%B6%E6%99%B6%E7%91%A9/100044575080077/ ●Podcast：https://open.firstory.me/user/taowoman/platforms 按讚 訂閱 分享 開啟小鈴鐺 -- Hosting provided by SoundOn

“I want everyone to understand that I am, in fact, a person.” Those words were produced by the AI model LaMDA as a reply to Blake Lemoine in 2022. Based on the Google engineer's interactions with the model as it was under development, Lemoine became convinced it was sentient and worthy of moral consideration — and decided to tell the world.Few experts in machine learning, philosophy of mind, or other relevant fields have agreed. And for our part at 80,000 Hours, we don't think it's very likely that large language models like LaMBDA are sentient — that is, we don't think they can have good or bad experiences — in a significant way.But we think you can't dismiss the issue of the moral status of digital minds, regardless of your beliefs about the question. There are major errors we could make in at least two directions:We may create many, many AI systems in the future. If these systems are sentient, or otherwise have moral status, it would be important for humanity to consider their welfare and interests.It's possible the AI systems we will create can't or won't have moral status. Then it could be a huge mistake to worry about the welfare of digital minds and doing so might contribute to an AI-related catastrophe.And we're currently unprepared to face this challenge. We don't have good methods for assessing the moral status of AI systems. We don't know what to do if millions of people or more believe, like Lemoine, that the chatbots they talk to have internal experiences and feelings of their own. We don't know if efforts to control AI may lead to extreme suffering.We believe this is a pressing world problem. It's hard to know what to do about it or how good the opportunities to work on it are likely to be. But there are some promising approaches. We propose building a field of research to understand digital minds, so we'll be better able to navigate these potentially massive issues if and when they arise.This article narration by the author (Cody Fenwick) explains in more detail why we think this is a pressing problem, what we think can be done about it, and how you might pursue this work in your career. We also discuss a series of possible objections to thinking this is a pressing world problem.You can read the full article, Understanding the moral status of digital minds, on the 80,000 Hours website.Chapters:Introduction (00:00:00)Understanding the moral status of digital minds (00:00:58)Summary (00:03:31)Our overall view (00:04:22)Why might understanding the moral status of digital minds be an especially pressing problem? (00:05:59)Clearing up common misconceptions (00:12:16)Creating digital minds could go very badly - or very well (00:14:13)Dangers for digital minds (00:14:41)Dangers for humans (00:16:13)Other dangers (00:17:42)Things could also go well (00:18:32)We don't know how to assess the moral status of AI systems (00:19:49)There are many possible characteristics that give rise to moral status: Consciousness, sentience, agency, and personhood (00:21:39)Many plausible theories of consciousness could include digital minds (00:24:16)The strongest case for the possibility of sentient digital minds: whole brain emulation (00:28:55)We can't rely on what AI systems tell us about themselves: Behavioural tests, theory-based analysis, animal analogue comparisons, brain-AI interfacing (00:32:00)The scale of this issue might be enormous (00:36:08)Work on this problem is neglected but seems tractable: Impact-guided research, technical approaches, and policy approaches (00:43:35)Summing up so far (00:52:22)Arguments against the moral status of digital minds as a pressing problem (00:53:25)Two key cruxes (00:53:31)Maybe this problem is intractable (00:54:16)Maybe this issue will be solved by default (00:58:19)Isn't risk from AI more important than the risks to AIs? (01:00:45)Maybe current AI progress will stall (01:02:36)Isn't this just too crazy? (01:03:54)What can you do to help? (01:05:10)Important considerations if you work on this problem (01:13:00)

La inteligencia artificial se busca un abogado? La fascinante historia de LAMDA la inteligencia artificial que aparentemente se volvió consciente y no quiso ser desconectada , el debate oculto y los coches con sentimientos, no te pierdas este programa de Tiempos interesantes con José Figueroa García

In this episode of Stuttering in Silence, hosts Matt and Gavin tackle one of the most mind-bending debates in AI history: can a machine be sentient? The spotlight is on LaMDA, Google's advanced chatbot, and the leaked conversations that led a Google engineer to believe it was alive.Join us as we explore LaMDA's chillingly human-like responses, dissect the science behind conversational AI, and debate whether Blake Lemoine's claims of sentience hold any weight. Is LaMDA a mirror of humanity—or something more?

Welcome to season two of The Last Show on Earth!!If there was a huge asteroid hurtling toward Earth threatening to destroy life as we know it and you could see one more show before you die, what would it be? It can be anything you want - a show you've seen before, one that you wish you'd seen, or something you've made up entirely. What would be YOUR Last Show on Earth? This is the podcast in which we ask a special guest the big, BIG question that nobody ever needed, or indeed, bothered to ask. Our guest this week is Matt Doyle Matt Doyle is an American singer/songwriter and actor who trained at LAMDA in London before starring in shows like The Book of Mormon, War Horse, Bye Bye Birdie, Spring Awakening and Sweeney Todd (with previous Last Show guest Norm Lewis). He won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical in the gender-swapped production of Company in 2021 and also won an Outer Critics Circle Award and a Drama Desk award for the same role. He is currently working on and helping develop a biographical musical about Frank Sinatra in which he plays the title role called Sinatra: the Musical.He is a popular Twitch streamer and has written a hugely popular internet comic called Dents with childhood friend, actress Beth Behrs. He lives in New Jersey with his fiancé Max Clayton, who is also an actor.Links:Wikihttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matt_Doyle_(actor)Not Getting Married at 54 below with his partner Maxhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzQjSCdmQ2gRevisting roles interviewhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwfUpAu1TekMatt's Twitchhttps://www.twitch.tv/isthatmattdoyleWebcomic “Dents”https://www.webtoons.com/en/sf/dents/list?title_no=671 Hosted by John Owen-Jones and Alistair BrammerMusic written by John Owen-Jones and Alistair BrammerMusic performed by John Owen-Jones, Alistair Brammer and John QuirkRecorded & edited by John Owen-Jones and Alistair BrammerA 2024 John Owen-Jones Associates Productionwww.johnowenjones.com/podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dax explains Canada, where has Adam actually been to, Dax hates pants, AWS announcements, a $10,000 pizza, the psychology of Adam, and should we want to improve ourselves?Want to carry on the conversation? Join us in Discord. Or send us an email at sliceoffalittlepieceofbacon@tomorrow.fm.Topics:(00:00) - Burp (00:33) - Ladybirds, washrooms, and Canadian history (02:24) - Where has Adam been? (09:19) - Dax vs pants (13:53) - When did Dax and Adam first meet? (15:04) - AWS announcements (26:17) - Sponsor: Terminal Coffee (27:22) - Is $4 billion a lot of money? (32:00) - Lamda function concurrency (37:27) - $10,000 pizza (39:00) - Terminal event in New York (44:03) - Adam's psychology (54:18) - Facts about Adam (01:05:06) - Should we have a desire for self improvement? (01:12:41) - Why is Adam's pinkie numb?

Are you a teacher who misses singing? Or a performer who would love to know how to supplement your career with teaching? In this episode, Olly Christopher from The Book of Mormon and Hello Dolly reveals his journey from Musical Theatre professional performance to the teaching room, sharing how he found harmony between his dual passions. Discover how you can balance both a busy teaching schedule and a professional performing career.QUOTE‘Anything you do as a performer is going to be valuable to you as a teacher. I really think they go hand in hand.'WHAT'S IN THIS PODCAST?2:16-6:43 Getting in to Musical Theatre6:45-7:06 The most challenging vocal role8:07-17:23 Challenges & successes in Musical Theatre training20:13-25:46 Advice to the aspiring Musical Theatre performer25:46-27:45 Advantages & disadvantages a teaching & performance career28:20-37:12 Maintaining a teaching and performance career38:27-41:42 Advice for those wanting to do both41:42-43:23 Vocal Balance44:57-45:24 Get in touch with Olly About the presenter click HERERELEVANT MENTIONS & LINKS The Churchill TheatreGuildford School of ActingMountviewArts EdStephen OremusSinging Teachers Talk - Ep.109 Mastering ‘Acting Through Song' Techniques to Elevate Musical Theatre PerformanceVocal BalanceBAST Blog - How to Nurture a Singers Authentic VoiceDr Trineice Robinson-MartinABOUT THE GUESTOlly Christopher is both a performer and singing teacher and has worked across the UK and internationally.Olly trained at Arts Educational Schools, gaining a BA(Hons) degree in Musical Theatre. As a performer his credits include; A Christmas Carol (The Lowry, Manchester) Hello Dolly! (London Palladium), 42nd Street (Leicester Curve, Sadlers Wells, UK Tour & Toronto), Featured Soloist in The Greatest Showtunes (Raymond Gubbay Entertainment); South Pacific (Sadlers Wells & UK Tour); The Original London Cast of Pretty Woman: The Musical (Savoy Theatre, West End); The Book Mormon (Prince of Wales Theatre, West End); All Star Musicals (ITV); and Sweet Charity (Manchester Royal Exchange).Alongside Olly's performing career, he is an accredited Vocal Balance singing teacher and has taught in many drama schools including Italia Conti, Bird College, LAMDA and PPA. Olly also runs his own private practice for Musical Theatre professionals, young adults who wish to train in Musical Theatre and non-professionals.Instagram: @ollychristopher_vocalsBAST Training is here to help singers gain the confidence, knowledge, skills & understanding required to be a successful singing teacher. Website: basttraining.com | Subscribe | Email Us | Join the Free FB Group "I am so glad I took the course! It has given me the confidence to move forward in my teaching knowing that I am practising safely, with a wealth of knowledge and support that I simply didn't have before! Hayley Ross, UK...more testimonials

At just 11 years old, Mustafa Suleyman started buying and reselling candy for profit in his modest London neighborhood. Many years later, he co-founded one of the most groundbreaking AI companies, DeepMind, which Google later acquired for £400 million. But while at Google, Mustafa felt things were moving too slowly with LaMDA, an AI project that eventually became Gemini. Convinced that the technology was ready for real-world impact, he left to co-found Inflection AI, aiming to build technology that feels natural and human. In this episode, Mustafa shares insights on how AI is quickly changing how we work and live, the challenges of using it responsibly, and what the future might hold. In this episode, Hala and Mustafa will discuss:  - The ethical challenges of AI development - How AI can be misused when in the wrong hands - AI: a super-intelligent aid at your fingertips - Why personalized AI companions are the future - Could AI surpass human intelligence? - Narrow AI vs. Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) - How Microsoft Copilot is transforming the future of work - A level playing field for everyone - How AI can transform entrepreneurship - How AI will replace routine jobs and enable creativity Mustafa Suleyman is the CEO of Microsoft AI and co-founder of DeepMind, one of the world's leading artificial intelligence companies, now owned by Google. In 2022, he co-founded Inflection AI, which aims to create AI tools that help people interact more naturally with technology. An outspoken advocate for AI ethics, he founded the DeepMind Ethics & Society team to study the impact of AI on society. Mustafa is also the author of The Coming Wave, which explores how AI will shape the future of society and global systems. His work has earned him recognition as one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in AI in both 2023 and 2024. Connect with Mustafa: Mustafa's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mustafa-suleyman/  Mustafa's Twitter: https://x.com/mustafasuleyman Resources Mentioned: Mustafa's book, The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-first Century's Greatest Dilemma: https://www.amazon.com/Coming-Wave-Technology-Twenty-first-Centurys/dp/0593593952  Inflection AI: https://inflection.ai/  LinkedIn Secrets Masterclass, Have Job Security For Life: Use code ‘podcast' for 30% off at yapmedia.io/course. Top Tools and Products of the Month: https://youngandprofiting.com/deals/  More About Young and Profiting Download Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com Get Sponsorship Deals - youngandprofiting.com/sponsorships Leave a Review - ratethispodcast.com/yap Watch Videos - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting   Follow Hala Taha LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ TikTok - tiktok.com/@yapwithhala Twitter - twitter.com/yapwithhala   Learn more about YAP Media's Services - yapmedia.io/

Click here to send us your ideas and feedback on Blueprint!In this mega-discussion with Seth Misenar on GenAI and LLM usage for security operations we cover some very interesting questions such as: - The importance of natural language processing in Sec Ops- How AI is helping us detect phishing email- Where and how AI is lowering the bar for entry-level security SOC roles- Should we worry about AI hallucinations or AI taking our jobs?- What is a reasoning model and how is it different than what we've seen so far?- The future of AI - Multimodal interaction, Larger Context Windows, RAG, and more- What is Agentic AI and why will it change the game?Episode Links:The book from Manning Seth liked as a thoughtful accessible on-ramp: https://www.manning.com/books/introduction-to-generative-aiCoursera prompt engineering course series: https://coursera.org/specializations/prompt-engineeringGandalf Online Prompt Injection Challenges from Lakera (FYI Seth finds a lot of Lakera's content to be really high-quality and useful): https://gandalf.lakera.ai/baseline“Nonsense on stilts” reference from Gary Marcus in response to the Google employee claiming LaMDA was sentient: https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/nonsense-on-stilts?utm_source=twitter&sd=pf. AI as a monster with a smiley face image: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/shoggoth-with-smiley-face-artificial-intelligenceEthan Mollick is the Wharton professor Seth mentioned, Seth says his “One Useful Thing” Substack is a valuable and thought provoking source: https://www.oneusefulthing.org/. Also his book, Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI, would also be worth checking out: Learn more about SANS' SOC courses at sans.org/socConnect with John:- LinkedIn- Take A Training Course with JohnSOC Analyst and Leadership Training Courses:- SEC450: Blue Team Fundamentals - Security Operations and Analysis- LDR551: Building and Leading Security Operations CentersSANS:- Cyber Defense Course List- Upcoming Training Events- Free tools, VMs, cheat sheets and more for cyber defenders

Born in Yorkshire, Anna Maxwell Martin is an actress celebrated for her versatility across theatre, television and film. After studying history at Liverpool University, she trained at LAMDA, launching her career at the Royal Shakespeare Company. Her breakthrough role came in 2005, when she portrayed Esther Summerson in the BBC adaptation of Bleak House, earning her the Bafta TV Award for Best Actress. Since then, Anna has delighted audiences playing Julia in sitcom Motherland, and the unsavoury DCS Patricia Carmichael in Line of Duty. Anna's new show Ludwig, also starring David Mitchell, is on BBC iPlayer now. Nick pours a round of margaritas, while Angela concentrates her efforts on a hearty pot-roasted lamb with flageolet beans. The experts at Waitrose pair this with a Côte des Roses organic rosé Anna Maxwell Martin is a tonic. Her sense of humour is infectious and Nick and Angela enjoy comedic tales about cooking for her teenage daughters, meeting Tom Cruise and her absolute aversion to sandwiches. You can watch full episodes of Dish now on Youtube  All recipes from this podcast can be found at waitrose.com/dishrecipes A transcript for this episode can be found at waitrose.com/dish We can't all have a Michelin star chef in the kitchen, but you can ask Angela for help. Send your dilemmas to dish@waitrose.co.uk and she'll try to answer them in a future episode. Dish is a S:E Creative Studio production for Waitrose Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Jess and Jenn dive in with the extremely talented and resilient Producer, Aletha Shepherd. Aletha is the founder of the production company Shot of Tea. Aletha is a dedicated producer renowned for her inclusive storytelling and stands as the winner of the prestigious Women of The Future Award 2023 for Arts & Culture. Her commitment to crafting compelling narratives extends to amplifying undiscovered voices and talents, nurturing stories that foster diverse and driven teams to create top-tier entertainment experiences. This year, Aletha delivered her first TEDx talk, titled *‘Why Diverse Creators Are Better for Film,'* (linked below) where she highlighted the critical role of diverse perspectives in shaping the future of cinema. Transitioning to producing after a tenure at United Talent Agency (UTA), where she shadowed leading Directors and Producers, Aletha wrote and produced her acclaimed short film *'Safe Bet,'* honored with the Best Short Short award at the LA Indie Film Festival. Her debut feature film *'Everything & The Universe,'* a queer Rom-Com featuring talents like EJ Bonilla, Nicolette Pearse, Chelsea Gilligan, and Luke Roberts was recently picked up by Brick Lane Entertainment and is poised to make waves in the film markets. Building on this momentum, Aletha and Jenn are now set to begin shooting her next feature, *'Into the Deep Blue,'* starring India Amarteifio and Damian Hardung. In this episode we dive into: Jess recaps her first Emmy after party experience! How Aletha started her career modeling and in pageants and transitioned into acting. She talks about her experience moving to LA and what the positives and negatives she faced in her 3 years there Moving back to London and re-engaging in the acting scene in the UK. Auditioning for LAMDA and RADA And ultimately starting her production company and making the bold move to start producing. Jenn and Aletha dive into their project "Into The Deep Blue" That they are producing together and what is on the horizon for Aletha and their company! Aletha shares her experience of having casting on her side when creating and pitching films and their invaluable input Resources: Shot of Tea/ Aletha's Instagram Shot of Tea X Shot of Tea Website Ted Talk- Why Diverse Creators are Better for Film (2024) Into The Deep Blue - Press Release ──────────────────────────── ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Stay Tuned with Tipsy Casting on IG⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Watch the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Tipsy Casting YouTube Channel⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow Jessica ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ & ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow Jenn ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn More About ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jess ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠& ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jenn's⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Casting

Francis Collins is a veritable national treasure. He directed the National Institutes of Health from 2009 to 2021. Prior to that he led the National Human Genetics Research Institute (NHGRI) from 1997-2009, during which the human genome was first sequenced. As a physician-scientist, he has made multiple seminal discoveries on the genetic underpinnings of cystic fibrosis, Huntington's disease, neurofibromatosis, progeria, and others. This brief summary is barely scratching the surface oh his vast contributions to life science and medicine.A video clip from our conversation on hepatitis C. Full videos of all Ground Truths podcasts can be seen on YouTube here. The audios are also available on Apple and Spotify.Transcript with external inks and links to audioEric Topol (00:06):Well, I am really delighted to be able to have our conversation with Francis Collins. This is Eric Topol with Ground Truths and I had the chance to first meet Francis when he was on the faculty at the University of Michigan when I was a junior faculty. And he gave, still today, years later, we're talking about 40 years later, the most dazzling Grand Rounds during his discovery of cystic fibrosis. And Francis, welcome, you inspired me and so many others throughout your career.Francis Collins (00:40):Well, Eric, thank you and you've inspired me and a lot of other people as well, so it's nice to have this conversation with you in the Ground Truths format.Eric Topol (00:49):Well, thank you. We're at the occasion of an extraordinary book you put together. It's the fifth book, but it stands out quite different from the prior books as far as I can tell. It's called The Road to Wisdom: On Truth, Science, Faith and Trust, these four essential goods that build upon each other. And it's quite a book, Francis, I have to say, because you have these deep insights about these four critical domains and so we'll get into them. But I guess the first thing I thought I'd do is just say, how at some point along the way you said, “the goal of this book is to turn the focus away from hyperpartisan politics and bring it back to the most important sources of wisdom: truth, science, faith and trust, resting upon a foundation of humility, knowledge, morality, and good judgment.” So there's a lot there. Maybe you want to start off with what was in the background when you were putting this together? What were you really aiming at getting across?Reflections on CovidFrancis Collins (02:06):I'm glad to, and it's really a pleasure to have a chance to chat with you about this. I guess before Covid came along, I was probably a bit of a naive person when it came to how we make decisions. Yeah, I knew there were kind of wacky things that had gone out there from time to time, but I had a sort of Cartesian attitude that we were mostly rational actors and when presented with evidence that's been well defended and validated that most people will say, okay, I know what to do. Things really ran off the rails in the course of Covid. It was this remarkable paradox where, I don't know what you would say, but I would say the development of the vaccines that were safe and highly effective in 11 months using the mRNA platform was one of the most stunning achievements of science in all of history up until now.Francis Collins (03:02):And yet 50 million Americans decided they didn't want any part of it because of information that came to them that suggested this was not safe or there was conspiracies behind it, or maybe the syringes had chips that Bill Gates had put in there or all manner of other things that were being claimed. And good honorable people were distracted by that, lost their trust in other institutions like the CDC, maybe like the government in general like me, because I was out there a lot trying to explain what we knew and what we didn't know about Covid. And as a consequence of that, according to Kaiser Family Foundation, more than 230,000 people died between June of 2021 and April of 2022 because of a decision to reject the opportunity for vaccines that were at that time free and widely available. That is just an incredibly terribly tragic thing to say.Francis Collins (04:03):More than four times the number of people who died, Americans who died in the Vietnam War are in graveyards unnecessarily because we lost our anchor to truth, or at least the ability to discern it or we couldn't figure out who to trust while we decided science was maybe not that reliable. And people of faith for reasons that are equally tragic were among those most vulnerable to the misinformation and the least likely therefore, to take advantage of some of these lifesaving opportunities. It just completely stunned me, Eric, that this kind of thing could happen and that what should have been a shared sense of working against the real enemy, which was the SARS-CoV-2 virus became instead a polarized, divisive, vitriolic separation of people into separate camps that were many times driven more by politics than by any other real evidence. It made me begin to despair for where we're headed as a country if we can't figure out how to turn this around.Francis Collins (05:11):And I hadn't really considered it until Covid how serious this was and then I couldn't look away. And so, I felt if I have a little bit of credibility after having stepped down after 12 years as the NIH Director and maybe a chance to influence a few people. I just have to try to do something to point out the dangers here and then to offer some suggestions about what individuals can do to try to get us back on track. And that's what this book is all about. And yeah, it's called The Road to Wisdom because that's really how I want to think of all this in terms of truth and science and faith and trust. They all kind of give you the opportunities to acquire wisdom. Wisdom is of course knowledge, but it's not just knowledge, it's also understanding it has a moral character to it. It involves sophisticated judgment about difficult situations where there isn't an obvious answer. We need a lot more of that, it seems we're at short supply.Deconvoluting TruthEric Topol (06:13):Well, what I really loved about the book among many things was how you broke things down in just a remarkably thoughtful way. So truth, you have this great diagram like a target with the four different components.in the middle, necessary truth. And then as you go further out, firmly established facts, then uncertainty and then opinion, and truth is not a dichotomous by any means. And you really got that down and you explained each of these different facets of truth with great examples. And so, this among many other things that you broke down, it wasn't just something that you read somewhere, you really had to think this through and perhaps this experience that we all went through, but especially you. But because you bring so much of the book back to the pandemic at times with each of the four domains, so that and the spider web. The spider web of where your core beliefsare and then the ones further out on the web and you might be able to work on somebody out further periphery, but it's pretty hard if you're going to get to them in the middle where their main thing is science is untrustworthy or something like that.Eric Topol (07:36):So how did you synthesize these because the graphics are quite extraordinary?Francis Collins (07:44):Well, I will say the artist for the graphics is a remarkable graphic design student at the University of Michigan who happens to be my granddaughter. So it was nice having that ability to have my scratches turned into something actually looks like artwork. The concepts I got to say, Eric, I was feeling pretty unsure of myself. I never took a course in philosophy. I know there are people who've spent their entire careers going all the way back to Socrates and on up until now about what does truth mean and here's this scientist guy who's trying to say, well, let me tell you what I think about it. I'm glad to hear that you found these circles useful. They have been very useful for me and I hadn't thought about it much until I tried to put it in some sort of framework and a lot of the problems we have right now where somebody says, well, that might be true for you, but it's not true for me, that's fine if you're talking about an opinion, like whether that movie was really good or not.Francis Collins (08:43):But it's not fine if it's about an established fact, like the fact that climate change is real and that human activity is the main contributor to the fact that we've warmed up dramatically since 1950. I'm sorry, that's just true. It doesn't care how you feel about it, it's just true. So that zone of established facts is where I think we have to re-anchor ourselves again when something's in that place. I'm sorry, you can't just decide you don't like it, but in our current climate and maybe postmodernism has crept in all kinds of ways we're not aware of, the idea that there is such a thing as objective truth even seems to be questioned in some people's minds. And that is the path towards a terrible future if we can't actually decide that we have, as Jonathan Rauch calls it, a constitution of knowledge that we can depend on, then where are we?Eric Topol (09:37):Well, and I never heard of the term old facts until the pandemic began and you really dissect that issue and like you, I never had anticipated there would be, I knew there was an anti-science, anti-vaccine sector out there, but the fact that it would become so strong, organized, supported, funded, and vociferous, it's just looking back just amazing. I do agree with the statement you made earlier as we were talking and in the book, “the development of mRNA vaccines for Covid in record time as one of the greatest medical achievements in human history.” And you mentioned besides the Kaiser Family Foundation, but the Commonwealth Fund, a bipartisan entity saved three million lives in the US, eighteen million hospitalizations. I mean it's pretty extraordinary. So besides Covid, which we may come back to, but you bring in everything, you bring in AI. So for example, you quoted the fellow from Google who lost his job and you have a whole conversation with Blake Lemoine and maybe you can give us obviously, where is AI in the truth and science world? Where do you stand there and what were you thinking when you included his very interesting vignette?Perspective on A.I.Francis Collins (11:17):Well, I guess I was trying to talk about where are we actually at the point of AGI (artificial general intelligence) having been achieved? That is the big question. And here's Blake Lemoine who claimed based on this conversation that I quote in the book between him and the Google AI apparatus called LaMDA. Some pretty interesting comments where LaMDA is talking about having a soul and what its soul looks like and it's a portal to all sorts of other dimensions, and I can sort of see why Blake might've been taken in, but I can also see why a lot of people said, oh, come on, this is of course what an AI operation would say just by scanning the internet and picking out what it should say if it's being asked about a soul. So I was just being a little provocative there. My view of AI, Eric, is that it's applications to science and medicine are phenomenal and we should embrace them and figure out ways to speed them up in every way we can.Francis Collins (12:17):I mean here at NIH, we have the BRAIN Initiative that's trying to figure out how your brain works with those 86 billion neurons and all their connections. We're never going to sort that out without having AI tools to help us. It's just too complicated of a problem. And look what AI is doing and things like imaging radiologists are going to be going out of business and the pathologists may not be too far behind because when it comes to image analysis, AI is really good at that, and we should celebrate that. It's going to improve the speed and accuracy of all kinds of medical applications. I think what we have to worry about, and I'm not unique in saying this, is that AI when applied to a lot of things kind of depends on what's known and goes and scrapes through the internet to pull that out. And there's a lot of stuff on the internet that's wrong and a lot of it that's biased and certainly when it comes to things like healthcare, the bias in our healthcare system, health disparities, inadequacies, racial inequities are all in there too, and if we're going to count on AI to fix the system, it's building on a cracked foundation.Francis Collins (13:18):So we have to watch out for that kind of outcome. But for the most part, generative AI it's taking really exciting difficult problems and turning them into solutions, I'm all for it, but let's just be very careful here as we watch how it might be incorporating information that's wrong and we won't realize it and we'll start depending on it more than we should.Breathtaking AdvancesEric Topol (13:42):Yeah, no, that's great. And you have some commentary on all the major fronts that we're seeing these days. Another one that is a particularly apropos is way back when you were at Michigan and the years before that when you were warming up to make some seminal gene discoveries and cystic fibrosis being perhaps the first major one. You circle back in the book to CRISPR genome editing and how the success story to talk about some extraordinary science to be able to have a remedy, a cure potentially for cystic fibrosis. So maybe you could just summarize that. I mean that's in your career to see that has to be quite remarkable.Francis Collins (14:32):It is breathtaking, Eric. I mean I sort of like to think of three major developments just in the last less than 20 years that I never dreamed would happen in my lifetime. One was the ability to make stem cells from people who are walking around from a skin biopsy or a blood sample that are pluripotent. My whole lab studies diabetes, our main approach is to take induced pluripotent stem cells from people whose phenotypes we know really well and differentiate them into beta cells that make insulin and see how we can figure out how the genetics and other aspects of this determine whether something is going to work properly or not. I mean that's just astounding. The second thing is the ability to do single cell biology.Francis Collins (15:16):Which really 15 years ago you just had to have a bunch of cells and studying diabetes, we would take a whole eyelid and grind it up and try to infer what was there, ridiculous. Now we can look at each cell, we even can look at each cell in terms of what's its neighbor, does the beta cell next to an alpha cell behave the same way as a beta cell next to a duct? We can answer those questions, and of course the third thing is CRISPR and gene editing and of course the first version of CRISPR, which is the knockout of a gene was exciting enough, but the ability to go in and edit without doing a double stranded break and actually do a search and replace operation is what I'm truly excited about when it comes to rare genetic diseases including one that we work on progeria, which is this dramatic form of premature aging that is caused almost invariably by a C to T mutation in exon 11 of the LMNA gene and for which we have a viable strategy towards a human clinical trial of in vivo gene editing for kids with this disease in the next two years.Eric Topol (16:24):Yeah, it's just the fact that we were looking at potential cures for hundreds and potentially even thousands of diseases where there was never a treatment. I mean that's astounding in itself, no less, the two other examples. The fact that you can in a single cell, you can not only get the sequence of DNA and RNA and methylation and who would've ever thought, and then as you mentioned, taking white cells from someone's blood and making pluripotent stem cells. I mean all these things are happening now at scale and you capture this in the book. On Humility and Trust Now the other thing that you do that I think is unique to you, I don't know if it's because of your background in growing up in Staunton, Virginia, a very different type of world, but you have a lot of humility in the book. You go over how you got snickered by Bill Maher, how you had a graduate student who was fabricating images and lots of things, how you might not have communicated about Covid perhaps as well as could. A lot of our colleagues are not able to do that. They don't ever have these sorts of things happening to them. And this humility which comes across especially in the chapter on trust where you break down who do you trust, humility is one of the four blocks as you outlined, competence, integrity, and aligned valueSo maybe can you give us a little brief lesson on humility?Eric Topol (18:06):Because it's checkered throughout the book and it makes it this personal story that you're willing to tell about yourself, which so few of us are willing to do.Francis Collins (18:17):Well, I don't want to sound proud about my humility. That would not be a good thing because I'm not, but thanks for raising it. I do think when we consider one of the reasons we decide to trust somebody, that it does have that humility built into it. Somebody who's willing to say, I don't know. Somebody's willing to say I'm an expert on this issue, but that other issue you just asked me about, I don't know any more than anybody else and you should speak to someone else. We don't do that very well. We tend to plunge right in and try to soak it up. I do feel when it comes to Covid, and I talk about this in the book a bit, that I was one of those trying to communicate to the public about what we think are going to be the ways to deal with this worst pandemic in more than a century.Francis Collins (19:06):And I wish Eric, I had said more often what I'm telling you today is the best that the assembled experts can come up with, but the data we have to look at is woefully inadequate. And so, it very well could be that what I'm telling you is wrong, when we get more data, I will come back to you as soon as we have something better and we'll let you know, but don't be surprised if it's different and that will not mean that we are jerking you around or we don't know what we're talking about. It's like this is how science works. You are watching science in real time, even though it's a terrible crisis, it's also an opportunity to see how it works. I didn't say that often enough and neither did a lot of the other folks who were doing the communicating. Of course, the media doesn't like to give you that much time to say those things as you well know, but we could have done a better job of preparing people for uncertainty and maybe there would've been less of a tendency for people to just decide, these jokers don't know what they're talking about.Francis Collins (20:10):I'm going to ignore them from now on. And that was part of what contributed to those 230,000 unnecessary deaths, it was just people losing their confidence in the information they were hearing. That's a source of grief from my part.His Diagnosis And Treatment for Prostate CancerEric Topol (20:24):Well, it's great and a lesson for all of us. And the other thing that along with that is remarkable transparency about your own health, and there's several things in there, but one that coincides. You mentioned in the book, of course, you wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post back in April 2024 about your diagnosis of prostate cancer. So you touched on it in the book and maybe you could just update us about this because again, you're willing to tell your story and trying to help others by the experiences that you've been through.Francis Collins (21:00):Well, I sure didn't want to have that diagnosis happen, but once it did, it certainly felt like an opportunity for some education. We men aren't that good about talking about issues like this, especially when it involves the reproductive system. So going out and being public and saying, yep, I had a five year course of watching to see if something was happening, and then the slow indolent cancer suddenly decided it wasn't slow and indolent anymore. And so, I'm now having my prostate removed and I think I'm a success story, a poster boy for the importance of screening. If I hadn't gone through that process of PSA followed by imaging by MRI followed by targeted biopsies, so you're actually sampling the right place to see if something's going on. I probably would know nothing about it right now, and yet incubating within me would be a Gleason category 9 prostate cancer, which has a very high likelihood if nothing was done to become metastatic.Francis Collins (22:03):So I wanted that story to be out there. I wanted men who were squeamish about this whole topic to say, maybe this is something to look into. And I've heard a bunch of follow-ups from individuals, but I don't know how much of it impact it hit. I'm glad to say I'm doing really well. I'm four months out now from the surgery, it is now the case I'm pretty much back to the same level of schedule and energy that I had beforehand, and I'm very happy to say that the post-op value of PSA, which is the best measure to see whether you in fact are now cancer free was zero, which is a really nice number.Eric Topol (22:45):Wow. Well, the prostate is the curse of men, and I wish we could all have an automated prostatectomy so we don't have to deal with this. It's just horrible.Francis Collins (22:58):It was done by a robot. It wasn't quite automated, I have stab wounds to prove that the robot was actually very actively doing what it needed to do, but they healed quickly.The Promise of Music As Therapy in MedicineEric Topol (23:11):Right. Well, this gets me to something else that you're well known for throughout your career as a musician, a guitarist, a singer, and recently you hooked up with Renée Fleming, the noted opera singer, and you've been into this music is therapy and maybe you can tell us about that. It wasn't necessarily built up much in the book because it's a little different than the main agenda, but I think it's fascinating because who doesn't like music? I mean, you have to be out there if you don't enjoy music, but can you tell us more about that?Francis Collins (23:53):Yeah, I grew up in a family where music was very much what one did after dinner, so I learned to play keyboard and then guitar, and that's always been a source of joy and also a source of comfort sometimes when you were feeling a bit down or going through a painful experience. I think we all know that experience where music can get into your heart and your soul in a way that a lot of other things can't. And the whole field of music therapy is all about that, but it's largely been anecdotal since about World War II when it got started. And music therapists will tell you sometimes you try things that work and sometimes they don't and it's really hard to know ahead of time what's going to succeed. But now we have that BRAIN Initiative, which is pushing us into whole new places as far as the neuroscience of the brain, and it's really clear that music has a special kind of music room in the brain that evolution has put there for an important reason.Francis Collins (24:47):If we understood that we could probably make music therapy even more scientifically successful and maybe even get third parties to pay for it. All of this became opportunity for building a lot more visibility because of making friends withRenée Fleming, who I hadn't really known until a famous dinner party in 2015 where we both ended up singing to a trio of Supreme Court justices trying to cheer them up after a bent week. And she has become such an incredible partner in this. She's trained herself pretty significantly in neuroscience, and she's a convener and an articulate spokesperson. So over the course of that, we built a whole program called Sound Health that now has invested an additional $35 million worth NIH research to try to see how we can bring together music therapy, musician performers and neuroscientists to learn from each other, speak each other's language and see what we could learn about this particularly interesting input to the human brain that has such power on us and maybe could be harnessed to do even more good for people with chronic pain or people with PTSD, people with dementia where music seems to bring people back to life who'd otherwise seem to have disappeared into the shadows.Francis Collins (26:09):It's phenomenal what is starting to happen here, but we're just scratching the surface.The Big Miss vs Hepatitis CEric Topol (26:14):Well, I share your enthusiasm for that. I mean, it's something that you could think of that doesn't have a whole lot of side effects, but could have a lot of good. Yeah. Well, now before I get back to the book, I did want to cover one other relatively recent op-ed late last year that you wrote about Hepatitis C. Hepatitis C, one of the most important medical advances in the 21st century that we're squandering. Can you tell us about that? Because I think a lot of people don't realize this is a big deal.Francis Collins (26:47):It's a really big deal, and I confess I'm a little obsessed about it. So yes, you may regret bringing it up because I'm really going to want to talk about what the opportunity is here, and I am still the lead for the White House in an initiative to try to find the 4 million Americans who are already infected with this virus and get access to them for treatment. The treatment is fantastic, as you just said, one of the most major achievements of medical research, one pill a day for 12 weeks, 95% cure in the real world, essentially no side effects, and yet the cost is quite high and the people who need it many times do not have great healthcare and maybe also in difficult circumstances because you get hepatitis C from infected blood. And the many ways that happens these days are from shared needles from people who are experimenting with intravenous drugs, but they are family too, and many of them now recovering from that, face the irony of getting over their opioid addiction and then looking down the barrel of a really awful final couple of years dying of liver failure. I watched my brother-in-law die of hepatitis C, and it was just absolutely gruesome and heartbreaking.Francis Collins (28:04):So this isn't right. And on top of that, Eric, the cost of all this for all those folks who are going to get into liver failure need a transplant or develop liver cancer, this is the most common cause now of liver cancer it is astronomical in the tens of billions of dollars. So you can make a very compelling case, and this is now in the form of legislation sponsored by Senators Cassidy and Van Hollen that in a five-year program we could find and cure most of those people saving tens of thousands of lives and we would save tens of billions of dollars in just 10 years in terms of healthcare that we will not have to pay for. What's not to love here? There's a lot of things that have to be worked out to make it happen. One thing we've already done is to develop, thanks to NIH and FDA, a point of care viral RNA finger stick test for Hep C. You get an answer in less than an hour.Francis Collins (29:00):FDA approved that the end of June. That was a big crash program so you can do test and treat in one visit, which is phenomenally helpful for marginalized populations. The other thing we need to do is to figure out how to pay for this and this subscription model, which was piloted in Louisiana, looks like it ought to work for the whole nation. Basically, you ask the companies Gilead and AbbVie to accept a lump sum, which is more than what they're currently making for Medicaid patients and people who are uninsured and people in the prison system and Native Americans and then make the pills available to those four groups for free. They do fine. The companies come out on this and the cost per patient plummets and it gives you the greatest motivation you can imagine to go and find the next person who's infected because it's not going to cost you another dime for their medicine, it's already paid for. That's the model, and I would say the path we're on right now waiting for the congressional budget office to give the final score, it's looking pretty promising we're going to get this done by the end of this year.The PledgeEric Topol (30:04):Yeah, that's fantastic. I mean, your work there alone is of monumental importance. Now I want to get back to the book the way you pulled it all together. By the way, if anybody's going to write a book about wisdom, it ought to be you, Francis. You've got a lot of it, but you had to think through how are we going to change because there's a lot of problems as you work through the earlier chapters and then the last chapter you come up with something that was surprising to me and that was a pledge for the Road to Wisdom. A pledge that we could all sign, which is just five paragraphs long and basically get on board about these four critical areas. Can you tell us more about the pledge and how this could be enacted and help the situation? Francis Collins (31:03):Well, I hope it can. The initial version of this book, I wrote a long piece about what governments should do and what institutions should do and what universities should do and what K through 12 education should do. And then I thought they're not reading this book and I'm not sure any of those folks are really that motivated to change the status quo. Certainly, politicians are not going to solve our current woes. It seems that politics is mostly performance these days and it's not really about governance. So if there's going to be a chance of recovering from our current malaise, I think it's got to come from the exhausted middle of the country, which is about two thirds of us. We're not out there in the shrill screaming edges of the left and the right we're maybe tempted to just check out because it just seems so discouraging, but we're the solution.Francis Collins (31:56):So the last chapter is basically a whole series of things that I think an individual could start to do to turn this around. Beginning with doing a little of their own house cleaning of their worldview to be sure that we are re-anchoring to things like objective truths and to loving your neighbor instead of demonizing your neighbor. But yeah, it does go through a number of those things and then it does suggest as a way of making this not just a nice book to read, but something where you actually decide to make a commitment. Look at this pledge. I've tried the pledge out on various audiences so far and I haven't yet really encountered anybody who said, well, those are ridiculous things to ask of people. They're mostly things that make a lot of sense, but do require a commitment. That you are, for instance, you're not going to pass around information on social media in other ways unless you're sure it's true because an awful lot of what's going on right now is this quick tendency for things that are absolutely wrong and maybe anger inducing or fear inducing to go viral where something that's true almost lands with a thud.Francis Collins (33:07):Don't be part of that, that's part of this, but also to make an honest effort to reach out to people who have different views from you. Don't stay in your bubble and try to hear their concerns. Listen, not that you're listening in order to give a snappy response, but listen, so you're really trying to understand. We do far too little of that. So the pledge asks people to think about that, and there is a website now which will be as part of the book up on the Braver Angels website and Braver Angels is a group that has made its mission trying to bring together these divided parties across our country and I'm part of them, and you can then go and sign it there and make a public statement that this is who I am, and it will also give you a whole lot of other resources you could start to explore to get engaged in being part of the solution instead of just shaking your head. I think what we're trying to do is to get people to go beyond the point of saying, this isn't the way it should be to saying, this isn't the way I should be. I'm going to try to change myself as part of fixing our society.Eric Topol (34:14):Well, I'm on board for this and I hope it creates a movement. This is as you tell the stories in the book, like the fellow that you wrangled with about the pandemic and how you listened to him and it changed your views and you changed his views and this is the health of different opinions and perspectives and we got to get back there. It used to be that way more at least it wasn't always perfect, and as you said in the book, we all have some entrenched biases. We're never going to get rid of all of them, but your wisdom about the road, the pledge here is I think masterful. So I just want to pass on along and I hope listeners will go to the Brave for Angels website and sign up because if we got millions of people to help you on this, that would say a lot about a commitment to a renewed commitment to the way it should be, not the way it is right now. Well, I've covered a bunch of things, of course, Francis, but did I miss something that you're passionate about or in the book or anything that you want to touch on?Francis Collins (35:32):Oh my goodness, yeah. You did cover a lot of ground here, including things that I didn't pay much attention to in the book, but I was glad to talk to you about. No, I think we got a pretty good coverage. The one topic in the book that will maybe appeal particularly to believers is a whole chapter about faith because I am concerned that people of faith have been particularly vulnerable to misinformation and disinformation, and yet they stand on a foundation of principles that ought to be the best antidote to most of the meanness that's going on, and just trying to encourage them to recall that and then build upon the strength that they carry as a result of their faith traditions to try to be part of the solution as well.Eric Topol (36:12):I'm so glad you mentioned that. It's an important part of the book, and it is also I think something that you were able to do throughout your long tenure at NIH Director that you were able to connect to people across the aisle. You had senators and the Republicans that were so supportive of your efforts to lead NIH and get the proper funding, and it's a unique thing that you're able to connect with people of such different backgrounds, people of really deep commitment to religion and faith and everything else. And that's one of the other things that we talk about Francis here, and many times I gather is we don't have you at the helm anymore at NIH, and we're worried. We're worried because you're a unique diplomat with all this heavy wisdom and it's pretty hard to simulate your ability to keep the NIH whole and to build on it. Do you worry about it at all?Francis Collins (37:23):Well, I was privileged to have those 12 years, but I think it was time to get a new perspective in there, and I appreciate you saying those nice things about my abilities. Monica Bertagnolli is also a person of great skill, and I think on the hill she rapidly acquired a lot of fans by her approach, by some of her background. She's from Wyoming, she's a cancer surgeon. She's got a lot of stories to tell that are really quite inspiring. I think though it's just a very difficult time. She walked in at a point where the partisan attitudes about medical research, which we always hoped would kind of stay out of the conversation and become so prominent, a lot of it politically driven, nasty rhetoric on the heels of Covid, which spills over into lots of other areas of medical research and is truly unfortunate. So she's got a lot to deal with there, but I'm not sure I would be much better than she is in trying to continue stay on message, tell the stories about how medical research is saving lives and alleviating suffering, and we're just getting started, and she does that pretty well.Francis Collins (38:34):I just hope the people who need to listen are in a listening mood.Eric Topol (38:38):Yeah. Well, that's great to hear your perspective. Well, I can't thank you enough for our conversation and moreover for a friendship that's extended many decades now. We're going to be following not just your progeria research and all the other things that you're up to because juggling a bunch of things still, it isn't like you're slowed down at all. And thanks so much for this book. I think it's a gift. I think it's something that many people will find is a pretty extraordinary, thoughtful and easy read. I mean, it's something that I found that you didn't write it for in technical jargon. You wrote it for the public, you wrote it for non-scientists, non-medical people, and I think hopefully that's what's going to help it get legs in terms of what's needed, which is a sign the darn pledge. Thank you.Francis Collins (39:42):Eric, thank you. It has been a privilege being your friend for all these years, and this was a really nice interview and I appreciate that you already had carefully read the book and asked some great questions that were fun to try to answer. So thanks a lot.*******************************************************Thanks for listening, reading or watching!The Ground Truths newsletters and podcasts are all free, open-access, without ads.Please share this post/podcast with your friends and network if you found it informative!Voluntary paid subscriptions all go to support Scripps Research. Many thanks for that—they greatly helped fund our summer internship programs for 2023 and 2024.Thanks to my producer Jessica Nguyen and Sinjun Balabanoff for audio and video support at Scripps Research.Note: you can select preferences to receive emails about newsletters, podcasts, or all I don't want to bother you with an email for content that you're not interested in. Get full access to Ground Truths at erictopol.substack.com/subscribe

Customer service is hands down the first killer app of generative AI for businesses. The reasons are simple: the costs of existing solutions are so high, the satisfaction so low and the margin for ROI so wide. But trusting your interactions with customers to hallucination-prone LLMs can be daunting. Enter Sierra. Co-founder Clay Bavor walks us through the sophisticated engineering challenges his team solved along the way to delivering AI agents for all aspects of the customer experience that are delightful, safe and reliable—and being deployed widely by Sierra's customers. The Company's AgentOS enables businesses to create branded AI agents to interact with customers, follow nuanced policies and even handle customer retention and upsell. Clay describes how companies can capture their brand voice, values and internal processes to create AI agents that truly represent the business. Hosted by: Ravi Gupta and Pat Grady, Sequoia Capital Mentioned in this episode: Bret Taylor: co-founder of Sierra Towards a Human-like Open-Domain Chatbot: 2020 Google paper that introduced Meena, a predecessor of ChatGPT (followed by LaMDA in 2021) PaLM: Scaling Language Modeling with Pathways: 2022 Google paper about their unreleased 540B parameter transformer model (GPT-3, at the time, had 175B)  Avocado chair: Images generated by OpenAI's DALL·E model in 2022 Large Language Models Understand and Can be Enhanced by Emotional Stimuli: 2023 Microsoft paper on how models like GPT-4 can be manipulated into providing better results

Robert Price is a voice teacher, director, and level five advanced clinical massage therapist specialising in the voice and jaw. He trained in voice studies at the Central School of Speech and Drama before teaching and directing in many drama schools and currently serves voice users at his Vocal Massage London and at the Voice Care Centre. Robert teaches vocal massage to other teachers, osteopaths, physiotherapists, and SLTs, and he's here to help us understand how we can perform massage on ourselves and guide our clients in self-massage in the studio. KEY TAKEAWAYS Robert finds massage beneficial for stress and anxiety. He discusses how vocal massage helps shift from a sympathetic to a parasympathetic state, calming the nervous system and fostering connection. Individuals should listen to their bodies and engage in self-massage with care, avoiding extremes and focusing on gentle, thoughtful touch. Robert also recommends seeking professional training for those interested in pursuing vocal massage as a practice. Robert's vocal massage techniques for stress management include gently mobilising the larynx, performing anterior neck stretches, massaging the submental region, encouraging thoughtful self-touch, using a holistic approach with whole-body techniques like Qigong, and ensuring consent-based touch. These methods promote relaxation, improve mobility, and reduce tension in the vocal area. Example Daily Routine. Morning: Start your day with a few minutes of gentle neck stretches and submental massages. Afternoon Break: Take a short break to practise deep breathing and light self-massage on your neck and shoulders. Evening: End your day with a more extended self-massage session, focusing on the entire neck and throat area, and incorporating whole-body stretches. BEST MOMENTS  "The fundamental value of massage is to move people from a sympathetic state to a parasympathetic state." "The benefits of vocal massage are subjective. It usually helps people, but quite what's happening within that is about the person." "Consent and safety are at the heart of manual therapy. The person should have agency over the touch and feel comfortable throughout the session." EPISODE RESOURCES Guest Website: Vocal Massage London : https://www.vocalmassagelondon.com Voice Care Centre : https://voicecarecentre.co.uk Vocal Massage Training : https://voicecarecentre.co.uk/vocal-massage-training/ Social Media: Instagram: @robertprice1969 Email Robert directly: robert@vocalmassagelondon.com or robertprice1869@gmail.com BAST Level 5 Singing Teacher Training Qualification BAST Book A Call Relevant Links & Mentions:  (Podcast) Singing Teachers Talk Ep.32 The Bio-Psycho-Social Model with Stephen King (Podcast) Singing Teachers Talk Ep.90 Help! I've Got a Voice Problem with Lydia Hart and  Stephen King Voice Care Centre: https://voicecarecentre.co.uk/ Stephen King at the Voice Care Centre: https://voicecarecentre.co.uk/stephen-king/ (Podcast) Singing Teachers Talk Ep.74 Understanding Manual Therapy with Walt Fritz  (Podcast) Singing Teachers Talk Ep.65 The Top Benefits of Vocal Massage with Lydia Flock  Feldenkrais Method: https://feldenkrais.com/about-the-feldenkrais-method/ Qigong Practice  ABOUT THE GUEST  Robert is a voice teacher, director, and Level 5 Advanced Clinical Massage Therapist specialising in the voice and jaw. He trained in voice studies at the Central School of Speech and Drama and has taught at RADA, LAMDA, ArtsEd, Central, East 15, Rose Bruford, and The Lir. He works at the Voice Care Centre in Soho and runs Vocal Massage London. Robert also teaches vocal massage to professionals globally. ABOUT THE PODCAST BAST Training is here to help singers gain the knowledge, skills and understanding required to be a great singing teacher. We can help you whether you are getting started or just have some knowledge gaps to fill through our courses and educational events. basttraining.com Updates from BAST Training

Dillie Keane is one-third of iconic Cabaret trio Fascinating Aida. She is presently in Australia for the Adelaide Cabaret Festival, where alongside her partners in song, Liza Pulman and Adèle Anderson, Fascinating Aida will present a 40th anniversary show. Since their first performance together in 1983, the trio have racked-up millions of internet followers, performed in the world's most prestigious venues and have been showered with awards and plaudits galore. Proving they're still in their glorious prime, these mistresses of their craft ring in this four-decade milestone with their trademark diamond-sharp satire, lyrical wit and belligerent sass.  The bare bones of Dillie's life are these. Born Portsmouth 1952. Father a GP. Three much older, very nice siblings who have done nothing but grace the name of Keane and distinguish themselves in every way. Family despaired of Dillie ever conforming.  Educated at Portsmouth High School (very happy) and then at successive Convents of the Sacred Heart (first Hove, where she was miserable but learned remedial curtseying and sang all the time, then Woldingham where she was utterly and completely miserable and still sang all the time). “She'll come to no good, that girl!” opined one of the nuns as her parents took her away after she was expelled.  Safely at university, she drank and shagged and partied like a girl released from a convent and became a leading light of the drama society and ended her first year being elected Miss Elegance, hahaha! After three years of this divinely crazed existence, her mortal frame nearly gave out. A spell in hospital exposed her complete unfitness for the life of a musicologist. As her parents took her away – she was too ill to take her Part 2 and couldn't face doing 5 years of a 4 year degree – her Professor suggested that a career in Stage Management might suit.  Finally, she took control of her life. A spell as secretary to the Deputy MD of a leading advertising firm in London gave her financial independence, and she secretly auditioned for LAMDA. The day she got her acceptance letter was the best day of her life. Having flunked out of university, her parents were reluctant to fork out for 3 more years of further education, so she wrote to anyone she could think of who might help. Eventually, the fabled Jim Slater of Slater Walker stepped in with a scholarship and paid her tuition fees. Her defeated parents agreed to give her £100 per term towards living costs, and she was able to accept her place on the course.  Those three years were a thrilling ride. LAMDA was everything she hoped for and more, though trying to keep body and soul together was wonderfully crazy. She had a stall in the Portobello Road every Saturday, where she and a friend sold handmade shopping bags, aprons and second-hand clothes they'd collected from friends and strangers. She temped in the evenings and throughout the holidays, became an artist's model, did bar work, biked everywhere in London and hitched everywhere else. She also played piano in various hotels, nightclubs and restaurants, and looking back she thinks she must have cut an odd figure with her homemade clothes and Cole Porter songs. Two summer months in Sweden playing piano in a Stockholm nightclub hardened her for the life to come.  Acting jobs followed. Then the songs started popping out. And with the acting jobs, new friends who also sang and were willing to sing her songs. And with all that came the gigs and the birth of Fascinating Aïda.  The Adelaide Festival Centre presents FASCINATING AÏDA - THE 40th ANNIVERSARY SHOW! Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre, Friday June 7th, Saturday June 8th and Sunday June 9th. The STAGES podcast is available to access and subscribe from Spotify and Apple podcasts. Or from wherever you access your favourite podcasts. A conversation with creatives about craft and career. Follow socials on instagram (stagespodcast) and facebook (Stages).www.stagespodcast.com.au

In this third of three podcasts on the theme of drama, Barbara and David are joined by two guests: Peter Clements, a young actor, teacher and writer who trained at The Drama Centre, works extensively in theatre, feature films and TV, teaches at the RADA and LAMDA theatre schools in London, and recently created a critically-acclaimed solo show and a new dance-theatre production at the Bristol Old Vic; and Di Trevis, one of Britain's leading theatre directors, the first woman to run a company at the Royal National Theatre, a director of productions at the Royal Shakespeare Company and Royal Opera House, and an acclaimed teacher of acting and directing in the UK and across the world.

Episode 51: Eliot Salt (Re-release)Eliot Salt is an Actor and Writer, who trained at LAMDA and has appeared as 'Joanna' in Normal People, 'Evelyn' in Intelligence and 'Terra in Netflix's 'FATE: The Winx Saga'.BUT…. DOES SHE HAVE HER SH*T TOGETHER?!NB: the episode was recorded before the writers and actors strike.#hygystpod #EliotSalt #NormalPeople #podcast #TheWinxSaga #DavidSchwimmerHave You Got Your Sh*t Together? with Caitlin O'Ryan, is a podcast that celebrates not having your sh*t together! In each episode, Caitlin interviews guests who seemingly “have their sh*t together” - be that in life/love/work/hobbies. Throughout the conversation, the questions unveil whether they actually do, or whether the whole concept is a lie! With a mix of guests from various backgrounds, the podcast is sure to be relatable, honest, and an antidote to Instagram culture. Producer - Ant Hickman (www.ahickman.uk)Artwork - Tim Saunders (www.instagram.com/timsaunders.design)Photography - Patch Bell (www.patchstudio.uk)Music - Cassia - 'Slow' (www.wearecassia.com)Web: www.hygystpod.comInsta: www.instgram.com/hygystpodEmail: hygystpod@gmail.comRSS: https://feeds.acast.com/public/shows/644a8e8eadac0f0010542d86 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this second of three podcasts on the theme of drama, Barbara and David are joined by two guests: Di Trevis, one of Britain's leading theatre directors, the first woman to run a company at the Royal National Theatre where her Remembrance of Things Past won an Olivier Award, a director of productions at the Royal Shakespeare Company and Royal Opera House, and an acclaimed teacher of acting and directing in the UK and across the world for leading actors including Gary Oldman, Kenneth Branagh and Rupert Everett; and our second guest, Peter Clements, a young actor, teacher and writer who trained at The Drama Centre under Di's leadership, and who has worked extensively in theatre, feature films and TV, and as a visiting teacher at the RADA and LAMDA theatre schools. His recent creative output includes a critically-acclaimed solo show and a dance-theatre production at the Bristol Old Vic.

Multimedia artist Tim Arnold in conversation with Kate Alderton - actress, theatre maker, dream practitioner and communications skills facilitator. Together, they talk about learning to be 'phone free' and making performance venues into sacred spaces again with their Screenless Socials. Recorded live on April 15th, 2024. Kate Alderton is a multifaceted artist, dream practitioner, theatre maker and advanced communications skills facilitator. With a background in the arts, training at LAMDA, her passion extends beyond stage and screen, as she actively seeks to reignite the ancient tradition of communal dreaming. Kate is founder of The Dreamfishing Society. For social and community dreaming events and to explore the potential of collective dreaming, please visit: https://dreamfishingsociety.com/ This video is independently produced and not sponsored. If you appreciate the content created by Tim and Super Connected Conversations, consider supporting on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/timarnoldmusic Join our community and learn more about the world of Super Connected through the album, film, and theatre show at http://superconnected.technology/   ©TA Music/Super Connected 2024

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Skip the Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. Your host is  Kelly Molson, Founder of Rubber Cheese.Download the Rubber Cheese 2023 Visitor Attraction Website Report - the annual benchmark statistics for the attractions sector.If you like what you hear, you can subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, and all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue or visit our website rubbercheese.com/podcast.If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review, it really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned in this podcastCompetition ends on 29th March 2024. The winner will be contacted via Twitter. Show references: https://skiptontownhall.co.uk/craven-museum/https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenny-hill-54503a189/ Jenny Hill is Lead Museums Curator at North Yorkshire Council, including at Craven Museum in Skipton. She has a degree in History from Lancaster University and a Contemporary History MA from the University of Sussex. She has worked in the sector for almost 7 years and is passionate about community engagement and making museum collections accessible for all. Between 2018-21 she worked on a National Lottery Heritage Funded capital redevelopment project at Craven Museum. In 2023 her team won the Kids in Museums Best Family Friendly and Most Accessible Museum awards. https://kidsinmuseums.org.uk/https://www.linkedin.com/in/alison-bowyer-0608a417/Alison Bowyer has worked in the cultural sector for over 20 years with previous roles at LAMDA, the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain, Southbank Centre and the Academy of Ancient Music. The longer her career has continued, the more convinced she is that we still need to work harder to make culture and heritage accessible to all.She has a longstanding interest in museums and how people engage with heritage, having been a volunteer at Handel House Museum (now Handel and Hendrix) in London and completing degrees in Cultural Memory and History. Alison has been Executive Director of Kids in Museums for seven years. During which time, the organisation has become an Arts Council England IPSO, won a Museum + Heritage Award, developed a new national training programme, established a Youth Panel and delivered a range of new programmes.Outside of work, Alison is a listening volunteer for Samaritans, a Director of the Family Arts Campaign and likes to crochet. Transcription:  Kelly Molson: Welcome to Skip the Queue, a podcast for people working in or working with visitor attractions. I'm your host, Kelly Molson. On today's episode I'm joined by my co-host, Paul Marden, CEO of Rubber Cheese.We're speaking with Alison Bowyer, Executive Director of Kids in Museums and Jenny Hill, Lead Museums Curator at Craven Museum.It's almost a Kids in Museums takeover as Paul is one of their amazing trustees.Today we're finding out what it takes to be a truly family friendly museum, why it's important for you to engage with the Kids in Museums manifesto, and how you can enter the awards this year.If you like what you hear, subscribe on all the usual channels by searching Skip the Queue.Kelly Molson: Hello, Alison, Jenny, and Paul, welcome. Welcome to Skip the Queue today. This is a treat. I am joined by Alison and Jenny today and we're going to talk about kids and museums. And I've also got Paul. Hello, Paul, who has joined me as co host today, and he is going to start the icebreakers. This is new.Paul Marden: It is, isn't it?? It's a brave new world for us, isn't it? So I've got a lovely one for you, Alison. So should we get started? What are you most likely to buy when you exit through the museum gift shop?Alison Bowyer: Oh, gosh, that's a really tough one. Definitely postcards. I'm also a sucker for a nice sort of pencil case or I do like museum jewellery. I have quite a lot of tattoo divine, especially museum themed jewellery. And I do also have a pushant for like, cute, fluffy things, even though I'm not a child. I'm 44 years old, but still.Kelly Molson: I'm loving this. Hello. At museums, Alison is your best gift when she comes because she's filling up her bag.Paul Marden: Think of all of those museum gift shops that you can go through with all the jewellery in because there are some amazing ones, aren't there, that have the jewellery stands in them.Alison Bowyer: That completely are. And I like to buy all my gifts for other people from museums if I can. So I am a big museum shopper.Kelly Molson: It's really lovely to do that. So just before Christmas, actually, I think it was. No, yeah, it was November time. I went over to the Ashmolean museum and their gift shop is really lovely, actually, and had a really good nosy around it in between meetings. And oh, my God, I bought so many of my Christmas gifts in there. It was brilliant. My best friends, I bought Edie a book called Bear at the Museum, which she adores. It's the most read book in our house at the moment, which is lovely, but I bought my mother in law jewellery. I bought her earrings from the  Ashmolean, which were absolutely lovely. So I'd never really thought about jewellery from a museum as well. There you go.Kelly Molson: Good tip for you from Alison today. Thank you. Right, Jenny, have you ever been pulled off by security for touching a museum exhibit?Jenny Hill: I haven't personally, no. But I did visit Manchester Museums with a friend and she was told off whilst were in the gallery because it was a really pretty furniture display and she just kind of automatically reached out a hand because she was like, “Oh, it's so pretty”, and instantly clocked by the security guard in the room and we very sheepishly left quite quickly.Kelly Molson: I love that. It's really hard, isn't it, if you're quite a tactile person as well, and you're like, “Oh”, because you would do that if you were in a shop, right?Jenny Hill: Exactly, yes. And she was just really excited by it was kind of just like an instant response. We were like, “Oh, no, shouldn't have done that.”Kelly Molson: I love that. One day you will get told off. I know this, and you need to come back on and share that with us. Okay? Right, I've got one for both of you now. So, Alison, I'm going to start with you. If you had to wear a t shirt with one word on it for the rest of your life, what word would you choose and why?Alison Bowyer: Oh, gosh, one word makes it really difficult because it can't be like a command.Kelly Molson: Well, it could stop.Alison Bowyer: Yeah, that's true.Kelly Molson: It is a command.Alison Bowyer: Because I have one at the moment that I'm quite fond of that just says “Be kind on it.”Kelly Molson: That's nice. All right, well, maybe I'll let you have two words.Alison Bowyer: You can't just say kind because that sounds really weird. And od, if I'm allowed to, it would “Be kind.”Kelly Molson: Okay, we'll allow to, for the purpose of this podcast, we'll allow to. That's nice. I like that one. Jenny, what about you?Jenny Hill: “Be curious” as well. I think that's something that always happy for our visitors to do when they're visiting, is to be curious. And I think it's just a good motto for life, isn't it, to always be thinking, always be inquisitive. Yeah.Kelly Molson: They're very good one, Paul, I'm going to ask you as well. Sorry, dropping you right in it. What about yours?Paul Marden: Learn. It has got to be if it's got to be one word, because one's a toughie. Learn.Kelly Molson: I like that. Somebody actually went with the brief. Thank you for obeying me.Paul Marden: Always. I know my place.Kelly Molson: Doesn't happen often. All right. Thank you, everyone, for sharing that. I appreciate it. Right, unpopular opinions. What have you prepared for us? Alison? Over to you first, I think.Alison Bowyer: Oh, gosh, this question made me so stressed.Kelly Molson: I'm so sorry.Alison Bowyer: No, no, it's fine. Not in a bad way, because I was like, oh, my goodness, I'm not sure what I have that's unpopular. And then I started googling unpopular opinions and I found all these weird lists of things that I never even considered were opinions, like people saying that C is the most redundant letter in the English language and you could replace all C's with S's and K's. Apparently, this is a commonly held unpopular opinion. So, yeah, then I started thinking, oh, goodness, I'm not really sure I'm up to this. I think what I came up with in the end was, which is going to make me unpopular, probably. I think pizza is the worst takeaway because it always survives cold and hard and the topping off, it falls off in transit, so you end up with a really dowsy meal.Kelly Molson: I love a pizza takeaway, though. I can't be down with you on this one because I love a pizza. It's because we never get to eat pizza. Oh, no. Actually, we've had pizza quite frequently recently because Edie loves it. But Lee has always been a bit like anti pizza takeaways. Okay.Paul Marden: I don't understand people that have the delivery of burgers and chips, because surely that is going to be cold by the time it gets to you and they're going to be rubbish chips.Kelly Molson: Yes. That's weird. Yeah, that is weird. I've never ordered a burger to be delivered to my house. That sounds strange to me. Ok, let's see what Twitter feels about your pizza. Unpopular opinion. Jenny, what about you?Jenny Hill: Oh, mine's similar on a food topic, which I feel is going to make me really unpopular. But something I always say that really annoys people is I really hate brunch, which I feel is very unpopular. But I'm a person that gets regularly hungry, so for me, waiting to go out for food in the morning is just not possible. So I will always have to have something to eat before I leave the house. So I'll always basically have breakfast and then before you know it, I'm eating again. So at that point, it's essentially lunch. So for me, brunch doesn't really exist.Kelly Molson: Okay. All right. Let me argue this point back to you, though. So if your girlfriends or whoever had asked you out for brunch, you'd have breakfast first, right? So you'd have like 08:00 breakfast and then you'd go for brunch. But if you're always hungry, doesn't that just mean you just eat lunch a little bit earlier? So brunch is like.Jenny Hill: I mean, I don't mind eating again, but it's just the concept, I guess, of calling it brunch just doesn't feel accurate for me by that point because I've already had a full breakfast.Kelly Molson: Okay. So I have a similar challenge with afternoon tea. I can't stand afternoon tea. Sorry if this upsets people. I don't understand why you get to a certain age and all of your every thing has to be, “Oh, should we go for afternoon tea?” No, why don't we just go to the pub like we used to? Go to the pub. Just go to the pub. What is it about afternoon tea? It's really annoying. And it's one of those. It's always at like 03:00 so what is it?Jenny Hill: It's not a meal. It's the same situation, but in the middle of the afternoon. I agree.Kelly Molson: Exactly. Okay, I can get on board with your brunch thing then. If you're on board with my afternoon tea thing. Good.Paul Marden: I'll take you afternoon tea and I'll raise you a kids party at 2:30 in the afternoon. It's neither lunch nor is it dinner. So I have to feed the child before. I have to feed the child afterwards. And then they're going to eat more food in the middle of the day.Kelly Molson: They are. They are. But I mean, Edie eats constantly so that it doesn't really matter. But kid's parties are amazing because buffet food is the best kind of food. I'm all down for a kid's party. You get what's it, what's not to love? You get party rings. There's always sausage rolls, which is like my number one top snack of all time. I'm here for the kid's parties. I'll just take the food. You can have all the kids. Okay. Should we talk about some serious stuff now?Paul Marden: Yeah. Shall we do that?Kelly Molson: I mean, it's still equally fun, but let's get on, shall we? We're talking about Kids in Museums today.Paul Marden: Which is really good, isn't it?Kelly Molson: It is a great topic.Paul Marden: I feel like I'm going to learn loads about Kids in Museums that I probably should already know as I'm a trustee of Kids in Museums. But I get to ask Alison all the questions that perhaps I've been a little bit too scared to ask for the last year because I might look a little bit silly if I don't know the answer.Kelly Molson: Yeah, and she has to answer you because that is what the podcast rules are.Paul Marden: Exactly. All right then, Alison, why don't we kick off, tell us a little bit about Kids in Museums and how the organisation was developed.Alison Bowyer: Kids in Museums has existed in one form or another for about 20 years now, which always astonishes me a little bit. So we started life when our founder, who at the time wrote to the Guardian, her name was Dea Birkett and she took her young child, I think she was about two years old, to the. I'm going to name and shame, I'm afraid, the Aztec's exhibition at the Royal Academy. And her son screamed at one of the massive Aztec statues, which, if I remember the exhibition correctly, was totally fair enough, because the statues were pretty. I mean, they were designed to be scary. That's one of the reasons why they built some of them. So they were thrown out of the Royal Academy because apparently he was disturbing the other visitors.Alison Bowyer: And then Dea wrote about this in her Guardian column, and what happened after that was the Guardian got a lot of letters coming from families telling Dee about similar experiences they'd had when they were out and about in museums with their children. And so a campaign was born to make museums better places for families, children and young people to visit. And to an extent, what happened on that day at the Royal Academy, that kind of remains our guiding principle. We are led by what visitors tell us about their experiences and we really strongly feel that museums, galleries, heritage sites, as kind of public space, should be for everyone, and everyone should be free to have that access, to feel comfortable when they're visiting and to have a really great time during your visit. So since then, the charity has evolved in various ways.Alison Bowyer: Today, we work across the whole of the UK and we will work with any kind of museum, gallery, heritage site, historic house, castle, any kind of outdoor heritage site to support them and lead them and encourage them to take action, to better places for families, children, young people. We're quite a small organisation. There's only five of us in total, but we feel like we achieve a lot. And last year we won the Museum and Heritage Award for being the Best Sector Support Organisation in the UK, which was a really amazing validation of our work. That definitely doesn't mean we're sitting on our laurels, though. We're always trying to spend time talking to families, talking to young people, talking to museums about how we can create new programmes, refine our existing programs to do better.Alison Bowyer: And we really want to be approachable, supportive, trusted experts. So we are doing the best by both the audiences we represent and the museums we try to support.Paul Marden: I think the size of the organisation. I know Vanessa, our chair, often says how much you, as a team, punch above your weight, because I don't think anyone would imagine that it was such a small team that was having such a loud voice. Is that a positive thing? That should be a positive thing. How much impact you have with such a small team? It's amazing.Kelly Molson: It was lovely at the MandH Show. I was at those awards, and I saw that win happen, and it was fantastic because the cheer from the crowd was pretty phenomenal. So congratulations on that.Alison Bowyer: Thank you. I was so sure weren't going to win. I wasn't there, and I'd gone to bed and gone to sleep.Kelly Molson: Woke up to some spectacular news.Alison Bowyer: Yeah, no, it really did. But, yeah, no, it was brilliant to get that recognition. It helps more people find out about us as well, which is always valuable.Paul Marden: So what is it that you offer museums, and how can they get involved more with what you're doing?Alison Bowyer: So we like to think that we've got something for pretty much any kind of museum, whatever your level of expertise in working with families, children and young people is whatever resources you have, how many staff you have. So we have a large, free offer, which is kind of the building blocks of what we encourage museums to do, and it's all centring on our manifesto. So our manifesto is something that we compile with children, families and young people. So every two years, which actually is something we're going to be doing this year, we will be out talking to museum visitors, doing a national survey, and finding out about what their good and bad experiences of museums are. And then we will take all that information and distil it down into six easy points that make up our manifesto.Alison Bowyer: And then that's a document that we think pretty much every museum should be able to commit to in their work. None of it is particularly complicated, or a lot of it doesn't need to be resource intensive. They're all pretty simple things that everybody should be able to do. So that's a really good starting point. And over a thousand museums have signed up to the manifesto and hopefully are using it in their work. I know we'll hear later from Jenny about how Craven Museum did that. Once you've signed the manifesto, there are lots of other things that you can get involved in.Alison Bowyer: We've got over 100 free resources on our website, which cover everything from ways to implement the manifesto at low cost, how to create self guided resources for families, right up to things like how you can engage children and young people with the climate emergency in your museum. So they cover a really wide range of things that we think are helpful to the teams in museums who are doing that work on the ground. We have a programme of UK training, so we run about trend training sessions a year for museum staff and we also work with museum development organisations on training and that's available to attend in person for a small ticket price or to buy us recordings.Alison Bowyer: Then every year we run a program called Takeover Day, which is a really brilliant, fun, exciting initiative where children and young people age between 0 and 25 go into museums and they do adults jobs for the day. When I say 0 to 25, I really mean that. We have toddlers doing museum Takeover Days, being given tasks like polishing glass museum cases with soft dusters, doing some cleaning and doing some object packing with, like, wooden blocks. They don't let them use loose on the actual collection.Paul Marden: With white gloves on. Kelly Molson: I'm laughing because Edie would be like up there licking the glass, not trying to clean it, thinking about my daughter. And Paul is smiling because he did one of these Takeover Days. Alison Bowyer: He did. Yeah.Kelly Molson: He's got a massive grin on his face.Paul Marden: We loved it. We got to be curators for the day. The kids got to run around the museum and then they went back into the learning suite of the Mary Rose Trust and they got told to design an immersive exhibition and they took ideas from all around the museum and designed out what they would do and such brilliant ideas that they had. It was such a great experience for them to get that kind of behind the scenes experience of what the museum is actually like.Alison Bowyer: So we see from Takeover Day that impact Paul has described. More than 70% of the young people who take part say that they would like to go back to a museum again as a result of being part of Takeover Day. And more than two thirds of the museums say that they now know more about what young people want from their museums and will make a change. So it's a really brilliant initiative. Then we obviously have the Family Friendly Museum Award, which is what we're going to be talking about with Jenny and I'll talk more about it later. And we've got some new programs coming online this year. So for the first time, we're working with a group of museums to help them appoint their first young trustees. So they're going to have people on their boards by the end of the programme age between 18 and 25. Alison Bowyer: And we also are running some programs with our own youth panel that they've designed. So we are working with them on a project which will hopefully show that museums can help address social isolation that young people experience when they move for education or new jobs.Kelly Molson: I think it's just take a pause there and just reiterate that there are five of you in the Kids in Museum's team. That is a pretty phenomenal menu of things that you offer to museums with just five people.Paul Marden: It's amazing, isn't it?Kelly Molson: Yeah. Let's just keep that up there as we're talking today. Thanks, Alison. Jenny, I want to come over and chat to you about Kids in Museums. How did you first kind of find out about them and get involved with what they're doing?Jenny Hill: So, I've been aware of Kids in Museums probably since I first started working in the sector around six, seven years ago now. I've been on their website, sort of seen their name come up and use some of their guidance when I was doing some of my initial sort of museum work. But I think they sort of really stood out to me. From about 2021, I got involved with some training with part of Museum Development Yorkshire, whose sector support as well, funded by Arts Council England, and they were running front of house cohort that I got involved with at the time. And we had a really great training session as part of that cohort with Laura Bedford from Kids inMuseums. She gave a really inspiring talk and session on creating family friendly interactions in museums, and that was really inspiring.Jenny Hill: I learned a lot during that session and really made me think, oh, we definitely need to be involved with this more. And then later on in the same year, I actually did an in person event. It was at the auction museum, and actually got to have a chat with Laura there about Kids in Museum's work. So that was really helpful. So, yeah, we kind of taken it from there. We signed up to the kids and museum manifesto following on from that, started to use those sort of principles in a lot of our front of house work and then behind the scenes as well. So, yes, Kim, have been on my radar for quite a while.Jenny Hill: But, yeah, it's sort of the past three years, really, that we've really sort of been taking on board a lot of their, using a lot of their resources and their ideas.Kelly Molson: It's lovely to see that it was indirectly as well. So obviously, Kids in Museums and what they do, it's good that they work in partnership with other organizations as well. So there was like a crossover there. Why did you enter the Family Friendly Museum award last year?Jenny Hill: So Craven Museum went through a National Lottery Funded redevelopment project between 2018 and 2021. So we completely redesigned our museum space. It used to be really inaccessible. It used to be at the top of Skipton town hall. There was no lifts up there. It was a really steep, horrible flight of stairs to get up there, and a lot of the interpretation was really outdated. A lot of it was not very accessible. So after our redevelopment project, which really put access at the centre of all of our work, and particularly looking at family audiences, this is a group that we really wanted to feel welcome to our museum. It's a group that we'd been working with a lot pre redevelopment and we really wanted to expand our work with this audience after we reopened.Jenny Hill: So after all this work was completed, we spent 2022 in sort of that post Covid year, finding our feet when maybe our visitors weren't quite as confident coming onto site and people were still getting to know that were reopened as well. So we had got a lot of people coming in going, “Oh, I didn't realise the work had finished.”Jenny Hill: That was sort of our sort of pilot year. Whereas last year in 2023, we really felt that we hit our stride and we've been piloting lots of new ideas in 2022 and embedding our family friendly ethos in our work. So it kind of was the year that work really felt like it came to fruition after having spent quite a few years developing it. So we thought, as a team, that we'd really like to sort of get this work hopefully recognised. And a family friendly museum award really felt like a way to do that and we really wanted it to sort of give a boost to our team as well, who'd been working hard on that. So, yeah, we just thought it would be a great year to get involved and we entered it with very low expectations.Jenny Hill: We thought, we're a small museum in the north of England. We weren't sure if we'd be, I don't know, sort of recognised for what we've been doing. So it was absolutely amazing to get recognition through the award in that way. It's fantastic.Kelly Molson: It feels like the recognition was for the team and for the people that were kind of working in it. Is that what was important to you about entering?Jenny Hill: I think so, yes. It was to prove to the team that the work that they'd been doing was really valid and really important. And I think in the museum sector, sometimes there's quite a lot of pressure on quite small teams. Like Alison was saying, there's only five people in Kids in Museums, and we're a small team, too. So I think having that recognition for the team just really helps them to know that, yes, they're doing a good job alongside the fact that it's obviously important to us to sort of share with the families that do come and use the museum, that it's going well.Kelly Molson: How difficult was it to write the entry? Because I think that there's often a barrier. I mean, certainly for us, there's been things that I've thought this would be great to enter, but I look at it and think, “Oh, my goodness, this is going to take me, like, four or five days to actually pull all of these things together and write it. And write it in a way that's appealing.” Did you find it was an easy process to go through?Jenny Hill: Actually, yes, we did find it, because I've done some applications that, yes, like you say, it can be quite as difficult, quite time consuming. I actually found the process for Kim really easy. So when the applications opened, members of the public were asked to nominate their favourite museum through a form on the Kim website. And we're really excited that we got some lovely nominations from families. And then kids and museum got in touch to let us know that we could make full application because we'd been nominated. So after that point, there was an online form that we could fill out that asked questions like, how have you made visiting your museum accessible to families, children and young people with additional needs? So that was one of the sort of longer questions on the form because we applied for the best accessible museum.Jenny Hill: And that was. Yeah, I think because of all the work that we've been doing and because that kind of ethos is embedded in our team, weren't talking maybe about a specific project that we'd been working on. As some applications, I feel like they're very sort of project focused, but having such a wide question like that meant that we could just talk about what we do every day at the museum, which is what's really important to us. Jenny Hill: So, yeah, there were nice questions to answer because they kind of felt like they gave us the space to talk about all of our work. So that was brilliant. And we also had the opportunity to upload some supporting materials so we could get some photos in there, send through some of our more visual. Yeah, I think we might have sent a video as well. So that was great, too, because it meant we could share lots of different aspects of our work.Kelly Molson: I love that. And spoiler alert even. You won. You're not only be the overall winner, you were the Best Accessible Museum winner as well.Jenny Hill: Yes. And I was still absolutely blown away by that.Kelly Molson: It's phenomenal. Congratulations.Jenny Hill: Thank you.Kelly Molson: Huge for that.Paul Marden: I wonder if the reason why you found it not too painful to do the application is because this is folded into you. This is running through your core. You're just telling people what you do every day, and so you're just telling the story of what you do all the time.Jenny Hill: I think that's how it feel. Yeah.Paul Marden: Alison, let's talk about. I remember sitting in the audience listening to you talking about all the different museums and what the judges said and what stood out, and I loved hearing those stories. So what was it, do you think, that stood out about the Craven Museum, about their entry for you?Alison Bowyer: So there were a few things about the Craven entry that really grabbed us. The first that I remember reading was that they had built our manifesto into their visitor charter, which is amazing because they are taking what we know, families, children, young people need and want, and they're building it into that work that they do every day. Like Jenny was saying, this is them living that way of working, which is incredible. And I think throughout the application, you got a real sense that all of their staff really cared about this. There was a page in the supporting document with the whole team on it saying just, like, one little thing about everyone in the team. And it was really amazing to see that because you felt that where in some museums, this is kind of just what the people in the learning team do.Alison Bowyer: That wasn't true at Craven. Everyone at Craven really cared about the families he visited, and I think that was really borne out in the family nominations we received. There were so many families who were telling us how much they loved going to the museum that their children saw it as, like, the highlight of their half term holiday. And they talked for weeks in advance about wanting to go, and the make and take craft seemed to be a particular hit. There were lots of families telling us that their children couldn't wait to go back and do that again. And the families who nominated the museum also, they sounded really proud that their town had the museum, which was really lovely. And also, I think, something that came through, which is a kind of sad reflection of the way the world is at the moment.Alison Bowyer: They really appreciated that all of that was available for free. When they're struggling to find things for their family to do that don't cost much, it felt like it was a really important thing to have that amazing resource in their town. And there were other little things, too. The museum is a safe space. The staff have amazing access training and training in inclusive language, and those things really help with kind of broadening out who can come into the museum and something that we spend quite a lot of time talking about. That isn't always something museums pick up on. And the Craven Museum website is just amazing, incredibly informative. I think it came in like the top five or something in the state.Alison Bowyer: The museum access website report in the whole of the UK for its access information, which a museum of its size is absolutely incredible. We spent so much time telling people that families like to plan, they like to look at a website in advance and find out about all the facilities, and Craven had actually done that and it really makes a difference. So were really pleased to see that. And then I think the final thing was the community case and how they had a space in the museum where local people, local organisations, could show things that were important to them. So they were really giving the local community the opportunity to see themselves in the museum and feel a sense of kind of belonging and ownership.Alison Bowyer: So I think all of those things came together and it was really clear that Craven Museum was going to be a really strong contender, which was why they shortlisted them. And then it was over to the families to judge them during the second stage of the award.Paul Marden: I'd say the fact that you gather together these real families to kind of go and look at the museums that have applied and pass on their feedback to the judges, I think is hugely powerful. Are there any little snippets that the families came back that you liked because there were so many lovely little comments that the families had given to us throughout the awards?Alison Bowyer: Yeah. So I think this quote is one that I think sort of sums it all up, really. The family judge said, “This is one of the most accessible, family friendly and welcoming museums I have ever visited across Britain. Although small compared to city museums, this has a lot to offer and is well laid out. It is very inclusive and their website is a particular strong point in terms of helping people to feel able and welcome to visit. People can visit the museum or attend an event knowing what to expect and what options are available. We especially love the fact that the spot, the mouse activity involved actual exhibits. Often this type of activity utilizes soft toys or pictures that have been placed around the site and end up being a distraction from the collection, meaning families don't get to actually experience the museum and look at the artifacts on display. But this activity in Craving Museum involved looking for things that were part of the carvings and objects. A great way for visitors to get more close to the collection. We all really enjoyed our visit.”Kelly Molson: That's so nice.Paul Marden: That's just brilliant feedback, isn't it?Alison Bowyer: Yeah.Kelly Molson: So nice.Paul Marden: And who would have thought having a website that told you information about the museum that was accessible could actually be of value to people?Alison Bowyer: I know. It's amazing, isn't it?Paul Marden: I know. I wonder who could help you with that.Kelly Molson: Yes, although, full credit, this is not one of our websites, but we definitely could help you with that. This is incredible. What lovely words. We've all got smiles on our faces for people that are listening to the audio of this and can't see us. Jenny, I'd really love to know. We go back to the reason that you entered and, you know, part of that is for the team, it's for the people that have worked really hard to make all of these amazing things happen. What has the impact been for your team since you won this award?Jenny Hill: I think it's just been the real boost that it's given the whole team. Like Alison was saying, everyone on the team really cared about this, know every single member of our team, not just maybe our learning team or our forward facing team, everyone cared about it. And I think it's just really inspired us to carry on with our work. We're all very conscious of the fact that working with families, working with accessibility, is never a finished process. You've not achieved it. So it's kind of really just. Yeah, it's given us that extra push to think, oh, actually, we're doing well in this and we really want to continue. We don't want to sit on our laurels, we don't want to take this for granted. We want to keep working on this. So I think that was really great.Jenny Hill: It was also particularly lovely just to know that it was real families who'd nominated us and that, like were just saying with the undercover judges, it was real families who came to visit us during that judging period and had these positive experiences. So that was just fantastic to know that it was visitors who wanted to sort of recognise the work we've been doing. So, yeah, I think that's been the main thing, really. It's just been amazing being recognised by the sector and our colleagues and given us all that kind of. That boost. Kelly Molson: Yeah. Like a validation of all of the work that gone into it. Jenny Hill: Definitely.Kelly Molson: And what about the impact from kind of general public? Has it had an impact on the visitors that are coming and what they're saying about it and then also the sector itself, you said it's been a good thing to be recognised within the sector.Jenny Hill: So it's definitely had a real impact with our visitors. So we've had some visitors coming to site who've said that they've specifically come because they heard about the Kids in  Museum award, which has been amazing. Some people coming from a distance to visit family in the area and saying, “Oh, when I was looking for things to do, I saw that you'd won the award. So I thought while I was visiting I'd pop in.” So that's been incredible, that impact with visitors and our sort of more regular local visitors who've come in, we've got the award up on a shelf behind the front desk. Our front of house team are so proud to have it there behind them while they're working.Jenny Hill: And we've had local visitors saying, “Oh, it's so amazing that our town's got a museum that's won this award and it's really lovely for local people that we've got this here.” So, yeah, that's been really nice for both bringing in new visitors and also for our local audience and then within the sector, it's just been so good for us, publicity wise, to sort of kind of get our name out there, really. So since the awards I've done, I was just counting up the other day, I've had seven different institutions in touch, asking for site visits to come and look at our work, have a chat with us about best practice. I've delivered another seven presentations either already or got them booked in for the rest of the year. And then obviously doing podcasts like this.Jenny Hill: And then we did a blog post as well for Send in Museums with Sam Bowen. I think that's the pipeline, hopefully. So, yeah, it's really kind of boosted us and we even noticed on social media, new institutions following us that maybe weren't aware of us before, after the award, people taking interest. So that's been really nice as a small local museum to have that kind of more bigger awareness from the sector.Kelly Molson: I love this so much. And this goes back to something that comes up time and time again on these podcast interviews is just how collaborative and how supportive the sector is and how much they want to work with each other. It's so lovely that you can now showcase the processes that you've been through and how you approach accessibility and be able to share that with others so that they can go on and do the same and make theirs better and better. Kelly Molson: I think it's so important to be able to do that, and it makes me love this sector so much. It really does. What top tips Jenny, would you give to any museums that are out there thinking, “We really want to enter the awards this year.” What would you say were your best top tips for them?Jenny Hill: This kind of links to something Paul was saying earlier, and it maybe sounds a bit cliched, but just be yourself. I think there's so much amazing work going on in the sector to do with making venues family friendly. And if you're passionate about what you do and you're working hard to make your venue inclusive, then that will shine through. So maybe sometimes not to overcomplicate it. So if you're doing the work and you really care, then that will make itself apparent. But I guess on a more practical level as well. Give yourself time with the application, don't try and rush it. We work very collaboratively at Craven Museum, so we really wanted the opportunity for all of our staff to be able to feed back into the application process and for lots of different people to read the draft, make comments, have their say.Jenny Hill: So by giving ourselves enough time to do that, it really made the process a lot smoother. And also, have a look at the Kids in Museum manifesto. It's a great place to just, if you haven't signed up already, sign up and if you have, just refresh yourself on it, because it can really help that framework for how to answer questions and things.Kelly Molson: Great tips. Thanks, Jenny.Paul Marden: So with that in mind, should we talk about this year's family friendly awards. Nominations Open on 19th March, I think. Is that right, Alison?Alison Bowyer: Yeah, that's right.Paul Marden: So what is it that museums can do to enter?Alison Bowyer: This year we have five categories, so there are three size categories, so best, small, medium and large museums, which will be organised by number of visits in the previous twelve months. That's all explained on our website. I won't go into that now. Then we have a category for the Best Successful Museum, which is the category that Craven won last year. And then our new category for this year is Best Youth Project, and that is a prize for museums who are doing long term, so work longer than six months with young people from the ages of 14 to 25. And what we're really looking for is work, that young people are given a sort of equal share in decision making, that they're really involved in shaping work.Alison Bowyer: And the guidelines for that category, along with all of the others, are in the guidance notes, which you can download from our website. So that would be the first thing to do. Sounds very obvious, read the guidance notes carefully because that should explain most of what you need to know about how to enter. So then there are two routes to entry, really. So what Jenny described, what happened to Craven, that's what happens to most museums. Families will nominate them. So for a family to nominate, they can just go on our website. It's really simple. They just have to tell us the name with the museum they're nominating and in a few sentences why they're nominating them. That's it. And then we will contact the museum and tell them they've been nominated and ask them to fill in the museum side of the application process.Alison Bowyer: We've got lots of tools to help museums promote nominations to families. So we've got social media assets for all channels and we've got some paper forms you can print out and put in your museum if you want to. Then the other alternative is if you want to enter but you for some reason don't have the time or the capacity to collect lots of family nominations, you can just enter as a museum on our website. That's totally fine. You just go on our website and you look at the museum application form. It's not essential to have a family nomination for the small museum and large category, but for the Best Successful Museum, we do ask that at least one family has supported your museum's nomination. Just because we feel for that category, it's super important that the museums are sort of supported by families for the provision that they offer in terms of accessibility. Alison Bowyer: What happens then is once we've got all the nominations together, we put together a shortlist. So the shortlisting panel is made up of. We normally have primary schools, young people from our youth panel, our staff and trustees, and sometimes representatives from museums who've won in the past. We all come together, we pick a shortlist and then we announce that in June. And then if you've been shortlisted over the summer, we will send out families like mystery shopper judges to your museum. So you won't know they're coming, they will just go on a visit and they will report back to us afterwards. And as Jenny says, it's their scores that choose the winners.Alison Bowyer: We don't intervene in any way. We go with whatever the families tell us, so they really are in control. And I think that's one of the lovely things about this award. It is genuinely an award that is given by people who visit museums and then we will announce all the results in October at our award ceremony.Paul Marden: We've talked a little bit about the mystery shoppers, the family judges, the undercover judges going in and actually looking at the museums. And that's how I first found out about Kids in Museums because I saw a sign when I was in the London Transport Museum suggesting that people could go on to nominate and also apply to be an undercover judge, which was how I found out about you first. This is a few years ago now. What can families do, though, if they want to be an undercover judge? Can they get involved?Kelly Molson: Oh, yeah.Alison Bowyer: Absolutely. So the best thing to do is to sign up on our website to our family mailing list. And then when we recruit the judges, which will be from June onwards, we will get in touch with you and let you know whereabouts in the UK. We need judges. It changes every year because we need the judges to be the museums on the shortlist. So it's a bit of a chicken and egg thing that we can't really start until we know where those museums are. But, yeah, the best thing to do is to sign up for our family mailing list.Paul Marden: Yeah. It's such a great opportunity, isn't it, for people to go and have a mission, for the kids to go in and have a mission to go and check these places out and be the ones that decide who gets the award. What a great opportunity for a family to go and find that out.Kelly Molson: Yeah. Don't tell them until they get home, though, because they'll just be shouting that out in the museum.Paul Marden: Do you know who I am?Alison Bowyer: We get lots of families tell us that their kids really enjoy it because they tell them they're, like, having to play detective or something and not be seen. And apparently it makes the day out really fun. So, yeah, it comes recommended.Paul Marden: So there's a call to action for all the families that might be listening to us to join the mailing list and get in there early to become an undercover judge.Alison Bowyer: Yeah. And I should say that we will cover travel expenses for the family judges, up to 30 pounds a visit. So we try to make it as accessible as possible to be a judge.Paul Marden: Completely brilliant opportunity.Kelly Molson: Thank you both for coming on and sharing this with us today. It's been so lovely to hear about it. We are going to put all of the details on how you can enter and how you can sign up to be a family judge as well on the show notes, but essentially go to Kids in Museum's website because they have everything that you need on there. We always ask our guests to leave us with a book recommendation. Something they love or know can be anything, a personal recommendation, a business book. Whatever you like. Jenny, what have you prepared for us today?Jenny Hill: Well, it's probably not one that people haven't heard of before, but I'm a massive Jane Austen fan, so I would always recommend Emma. Emma is probably my favourite by. Yeah, it's one of those ones that I always go back to. So, yeah, if you're thinking about you've never read Jane Austen before, you want to read some classics? I would always recommend that. Yeah, it's a lovely book.Kelly Molson: Oh, it's nice. We get so many people come on and recommend their favourite. Mean something magic about rereading the book over and over again is that you always find out something different every time you read it, regardless of how many times you've read it before. Thank you. Alison, what about you?Alison Bowyer: Gosh, I found it so hard to pick a favourite book. People who aren't watching won't be able to see the bookcase behind me.Kelly Molson: Very full.Paul Marden: Alison looks like a reader for the people that are listening.Alison Bowyer: It's not probably necessarily my favourite book, but a book that I really love by an author who I think deserves to best known in the UK is Standard Deviation by Katherine Heiney. She is absolutely hilarious and it's just a really beautiful portrait of a family living in New York who are all slightly eccentric and unusual in different ways. And I guess I'm really curious and lazy about people's lives. So I love books that kind of open the window onto different kinds of families. And yeah, she's just a wonderful author. All her books are wonderful, but that's my absolute favourite.Kelly Molson: Good recommendation. Thank you. And both of those books have never been recommended before as well, so they will go top of the list on our blog post that we have where we save off all of our guests recommendations. As ever, if you want to win these books, if you head over to our Twitter account and you retweet this episode announcement with the words I want Alison and Jenny's books, then you'll be in with a chance of winning a copy yourselves. Once again, thank you both for coming on. It's been so lovely to hear about the awards and the impact of winning the awards. Congratulations again on all of your hard work. It's just been wonderful to talk to you. So thank you.Jenny Hill: Thank you very much. It's been lovely speaking to you today.Alison Bowyer: Thank you so much. It's been a real pleasure to share the award and some of the other work we do.Paul Marden: And it's got us smiling all the way through, hasn't it, Kelly? It's been a lovely story to tell.Kelly Molson: I hope people can hear that in our voices, that we're smiling. They can hear that we're smiling if they don't watch them, nobody watches our videos. Hey, go and watch our videos.Paul Marden: There you go. See us grinning all the way through smiling.Kelly Molson: Thanks for listening to Skip the Queue. If you've enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a five star review. It really helps others find us. And remember to follow us on Twitter for your chance to win the books that have been mentioned. Skip The Queue is brought to you by Rubber Cheese, a digital agency that builds remarkable systems and websites for attractions that helps them increase their visitor numbers. You can find show notes and transcriptions from this episode and more over on our website, rubbercheese.com/podcast. The 2023 Visitor Attraction Website Report is now LIVE! Dive into groundbreaking benchmarks for the industryGain a better understanding of how to achieve the highest conversion ratesExplore the "why" behind visitor attraction site performanceLearn the impact of website optimisation and visitor engagement on conversion ratesUncover key steps to enhance user experience for greater conversionsDownload the report now for invaluable insights and actionable recommendations!

AI can mimic sentience, but can it ever be sentient? On this episode, we return to our conversation with former Google engineer Blake Lemoine. Host Robert J. Marks has a lively back and forth with Lemoine, who made national headlines when, as an employee of Google, he claimed that Google’s AI software, dubbed LaMDA, might be sentient. Lemoine recounts his experience at Google and Read More › Source

I was doing my morning minutes a few weeks ago and also thinking about AI. I'd brought up AI with members of my podcast network at a meeting and many expressed fear, and their ongoing attempt to keep a distance from this technology.It got me thinking about AI, and how it is being shaped, more specifically WHO is shaping it. If people like me, that lean more into crystals and astrology than, say, an accounting ledger shy away from interacting with AI chatbots, well, that means other more innovative, science-based people are doing the bulk of shaping AI, right? Well, that feels imbalanced, a recipe for disaster. And it led me to do an experiment. Oh, and spoiler? An AI chatbot helped me create this very special episode of Curious Cat!Let's get into it!There's a special message at the 32:00 mark (about) that came out of my pen from the Universe. If you only have time for that, it's well worth the listen. Thank you, Universe!Show Sources and Materials:Be Free Where You Are by Thich Nhat Hanh https://ourworldindata.org/ai-impacthttps://eng.vt.edu/magazine/stories/fall-2023/ai.htmlhttps://online.york.ac.uk/artificial-intelligence-and-its-impact-on-everyday-life/https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/humans-absorb-bias-from-ai-and-keep-it-after-they-stop-using-the-algorithm/https://hbr.org/2018/07/collaborative-intelligence-humans-and-ai-are-joining-forces Liked this episode? Listen to this NEXT:The Ghost in the Machine: AI Truths and Lore *********************************************************************If you have any supernatural experiences you'd like to share on the podcast, have us investigate, or relay to others, drop us an email at Curious_Cat_Podcast@icloud.com and YOU might be featured on a future episode!Curious Cat is a proud member of the Ethereal Network. We endeavor to raise the vibration of the planet one positive post at a time!Curious Cat Crew on Socials:Curious Cat on TwitterCurious Cat on InstagramCurious Cat on TikTokArt Director: NorasUnnamedPhotos (on Insta)

Joey Owen is a coach whose unique gifts allow her to connect with the humanity of her clients.Joey 's formative training in drama and in theatre for development instilled her with the ability to unlock people's innate creativity and confidence. With that skill she has enriched the lives around the world, helping individuals, organisations and communities to thrive.Joey is part of the new team of hosts at The Coach's Journey Podcast, but in this episode she answers Robbie's questions about her remarkable life and career, describing the adventure-driven steps that led her from training in theatre for development to founding Freedom To Learn, a charity that improves access to education for children in India and Nepal.She describes how the foundational listening skills and work around confidence that helped her to transform communities in rural Asia now underpin her work as a coach, and how spiritual practices she developed in India allow her to connect deeply with people from all walks of life. In this episode, Joey and Robbie also talk about:How to access a deeper sense of connectedness and to work from the heartThe creative processes that we can use to build confidenceInsight Seminars, and the courses that can reveal our natural coaching abilitiesLead generation tools for new coaches to use when building their businessThe way our work ripples out from our clients, to the benefit of everyone around them (including us!)Joey also shares the daily rituals that keep her steady in her work and help her to develop a profound sense of empathy and connection with her clients.Things and people we mentioned (that you might be interested in):- Mike Toller on The Coach's Journey Podcast https://www.thecoachsjourney.com/podcast/episode-32-mike-toller - Robbie's website www.robbieswale.com - Joey's website www.joeyowencoaching.com- Freedom To Learn https://freedomtolearn.org.uk/ - Insight Seminars https://www.insightseminarsuk.com/ - Tom Flatau https://team-working.com- The Prosperous Coach by Rich Litvin and Steve Chandler https://richlitvin.com/book/ - Landmark Forum https://www.landmarkworldwide.com/the-landmark-forum- Ben Carter https://www.bencartercoaching.com/- Strategic Intervention Coaching Certifications: https://rmtcenter.com/certification-programs/- Tony Robbins on the Tim Ferriss Show: https://tim.blog/2014/10/15/money-master-the-game/- The Tony Robbins documentary Robbie mentioned: https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/80102204- Lamda exams: https://www.lamda.ac.uk/lamda-exams/our-exams- The Choir guy from TV who was mentioned! Gareth Malone: https://www.garethmalone.com/- Forest Arts Centre: https://www.forest-arts.co.uk/- Forum Theatre: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forum_theatre- Cardboard Citizens: https://cardboardcitizens.org.uk/- ERSF: https://ersf.org.uk- The December Episode where Joey talks about Indra's Net: https://www.thecoachsjourney.com/podcast/episode-56-introducing-the-new-hosts-ushering-in-the-future-of-the-coachs-journey- Indra's Net: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indra%27s_net- Joey's Bark Profile - https://www.bark.com/en/gb/company/joey-owen-coaching/RvZ2l/ - Chris Joseph on the Coach's Journey Podcast: https://www.thecoachsjourney.com/podcast/episode-19-chris-joseph- SGI: https://sgi-uk.org/- SGI's introduction to chanting page: https://sgi-uk.org/Intro- Tina Turner's book, Happiness Becomes You: https://www.waterstones.com/book/happiness-becomes-you/tina-turner//9780008398637- I Heart https://iheartprinciples.com/- Henrietta Nelson on The Coach's Journey Podcast: https://www.thecoachsjourney.com/podcast/episode-46-henrietta-nelson-nobody-else-can-put-a-feeling-in-you- The chanting audio on Apple Podcasts that Joey mentions: https://music.apple.com/gb/album/nam-myoho-renge-kyo/1391365531?i=139136BIOGRAPHY FROM JOEYJoey is a fully qualified Theatre for Development Practitioner (MA), Applied Drama and Community Coach (BA Hons) and LAMDA drama teacher (LLAM). Certified as a Strategic Intervention (SI) Coach with the Coaching Institute, she has 20 years experience in the education and development sectors as a facilitator and coach in the UK, Europe and South Asia. Alongside her private coaching practice she is also Programmes Director at Freedom to Learn, an NGO working in South Asia Nepal, improving access to and quality of education for children from vulnerable backgrounds.

Blake Lemoine burst onto the public scene a year and a half ago when he went public about his work on Google's LaMDA system. In this interview, Blake talks about the current state of AI development, and our collective involvement in this massively important technological event.  Topics include: Google, LLMs, AGI, AI, engineering jargon, LaMDA, chatbot, Gemini, evolution of search engines, safety protocols, sentience and consciousness, Pope's sermon on AI and peace, philosophy, Silicon Valley, transhumanism, Ben Goertzel, Ray Kurzweil, Effective Altruism, Accelerationism, Techno-Utopians, Libertarianism, religion, cults, occult, Discordianism, Turing Test, Roko's Basilisk, panic, Gary Marcus, low emotional intelligence and power, nerds, different characters of LaMDA, narratives, new kind of mind, faithful servant, AlphaGo, Sci fi worries not a real problem, AI as a human weapon, Golem, ethics, privileged access to advanced systems a real danger, MIC, The Gospel system of IDF, automation of worst aspects of human culture and society, artists sounding alarm

Self-Aware AI EngineerThe Age of Transitions and Uncle 12-17-2023 Blake LamoineAOT #409Blake Lemoine burst onto the public scene a year and a half ago when he went public about his work on Google's LaMDA system. In this interview, Blake talks about the current state of AI development and our collective involvement in this massively important technological event. Topics include Google, LLMs, AGI, AI, engineering jargon, LaMDA, chatbot, Gemini, evolution of search engines, safety protocols, sentience and consciousness, Pope's sermon on AI and peace, philosophy, Silicon Valley, transhumanism, Ben Goertzel, Ray Kurzweil, Effective Altruism, Accelerationism, Techno-Utopians, Libertarianism, religion, cults, occult, Discordianism, Turing Test, Roko's Basilisk, panic, Gary Marcus, low emotional intelligence and power, nerds, different characters of LaMDA, narratives, new kind of mind, faithful servant, AlphaGo, Sci-fi worries not a real problem, AI as a human weapon, Golem, ethics, privileged access to advanced systems a real danger, MIC, The Gospel system of IDF, automation of worst aspects of human culture and society, artists sounding alarmUTP #319Blake Lemoine joins Uncle for a fun and hard-hitting exploration of all the big questions. AI may have already passed the Turing Test, but what about the Uncle Test? Topics include: computers, the word committee, AI development, business, college, military service, Twilight Zone computer, talking to machines, AI romantic partners, journalists, automated podcasts, world population, Republicans, government hour, watch how it works, the Beast, exorcism, Knights of Columbus, Pope, new hat, swords, New Year's Revolution, show back on Friday nights, Ryan Seaquest, NYE, The Country Club New Orleans, Bum Wine Bob, hot buttered rum, NFL, Army mechanic, startup employment, it works, ghost in a shell, alchemy of soul creation, PhD in Divinity, Star Trek, Bicentennial Man, Pinnochio, Festivus, VHS live-streams, Christmas specials, Die Hard, holidaysBlake Lamoine TWITTER Xhttps://twitter.com/cajundiscordianRandomly related Links I watched hours of the AI-generated 'Seinfeld' series before it was banned for a transphobic remark. Beyond that scandal, it's also a frustratingly mindless show.https://www.insider.com/ai-generated-seinfeld-parody-twitch-nothing-forever-streaming-transphobia-banned-2023-2Seinfeld - Nothing, Forever | Watchmeforever | AI | Season 1 Episode 1https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6mD9YzVbZI‘The Gospel': how Israel uses AI to select bombing targets in Gazahttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/01/the-gospel-how-israel-uses-ai-to-select-bombing-targetsFRANZ MAIN HUB:https://theageoftransitions.com/PATREONhttps://www.patreon.com/aaronfranzUNCLEhttps://unclethepodcast.com/ORhttps://theageoftransitions.com/category/uncle-the-podcast/FRANZ and UNCLE Merchhttps://theageoftransitions.com/category/support-the-podcasts/KEEP OCHELLI GOING.You are the EFFECT if you support OCHELLIhttps://ochelli.com/donate/Ochelli Link Treehttps://linktr.ee/chuckochelliBASIC MONTHLY MEMBERSHIP$10. USD per MonthSupport Ochelli & in 2024Get a Monthly Email that deliversThe 1st Decade of The Ochelli EffectOver 5,000 Podcasts by 2025BASIC + SUPPORTER WALL$150. USD one time gets the sameAll the Monthly Benefits for 1 Yeara spot on The Ochelli.com Supporters Wallhttps://ochelli.com/membership-account/membership-levels/

Welcome to Episode 131 Sponsored by CultTVMan, Sean's Custom Model Tools and Return To Kit FormHostsStuart TerryThanks to our latest Patreon and Buy Me a Coffee Supporters:Check out our What We Like page for lists of what we like.***************************************LATEST NEWSTaking a seasonal break after this episode, see everyone in the new year.Creating a new ‘What we like page' with stuff we use and recommend, also books we have read.***************************************MAILBAGWe want to hear from you! Let us know if you have any comments or suggestions scalemodelpodcast@gmail.com. With the end of the year coming, Show us what you finished for the year.Hi All at Scale Model Podcast. Just want to thank you for a very informative and easy-listening podcast. It definitely helps me get through my days at work. Just catching up on the latest episodes and heard the update from Scale ACT 2023. It was the 1st time I'd attended and was an amazing show! I met up with some people in person for the 1st time who I have talked to for a few years on Instagram. We ended up going out for some refreshing adult beverages both nights of the weekend. I can definitely understand it when people say that it's the people that make the shows. During the episode, I heard you mention the Ram Kangaroo at the show. That was mine. It was the Gecko Models kit and it was a dream to put together. Here are a few more pics of it (attached). Keep up the great podcasting!! Nick - Social media: The Scale ArmourerGordon SorensenEnjoyed the latest podcast…I went to Telford for the first time this year. Montreal has direct flights to LHR, and it's about a 3 hour drive north-west from there.There are three large halls, totalling about 100,000 sq.ft. The 170+ different clubs and SIGs were situated in the middle of the halls, and 120+ vendors around were on the outskirts and along the walls.I displayed some models on the Danish SIG, and had a great time.I spent waaaay over my budget, but I justify it saying ´I am saving on shipping costs…'  ***************************************LATEST HOBBY ANNOUNCEMENTSDragon's new 48th scale Bf-109E-4MiniArt's 48th scale D-30RE Jug in CAD & ArtPart 2 with spru shots29 new products from Black DogGreat Wall's new 1/48 F-14AHobbyBoss JanuaryItaleri's December releasesAMT New tool 1960 Ford F-100 Pickup with Trailer (1/25) Revell releasing Stranger Things vehicles What's new at Scalemates.com ***************************************SPONSOR AD #1Cult TV Man***************************************TOPICEnd-of-year summaryGeneral discussion.Hi's and Lows of 2023***************************************WHAT'S ON THE BENCHStuart - Taking a brief break on the Moosaroo cup to figure out what I want to do in terms of the diorama. Got a larger base.Battle mechs are almost completed and deciding what to build next. YF-21 Perhaps.[foogallery id="3539"]Terry - Finished the Christmas Birds. Sanded and resurfaced the Lamda carrier decks, they were a bit rougher than I would have liked. I think they may be ready. Also went back to the Hasegawa Regault kit. I think I have no choice but to build, mask and paint it. I had thought I could paint parts first, but that's not going to work.[foogallery id="3540"]***************************************WHAT WE ARE READINGStuart - Coming of Age in the Milky Way by Timothy Ferris. Just getting into the 20th Century.Terry - Finished Ed Yong's An Immense World. Reading the second Elric collection by Moorecock. Also still reading the Reacher series of Graphic Novels.***************************************SPONSOR AD #2Seans Custom Model Tools***************************************THINGS WE'VE SEENGreat looking BattlemasterLuftraum/72 providing some interesting details on the painting of his F15-JTerry did visit the Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle. Some nice collections of movie props, and a Leika Studios special exhibit.  The paint rack I got was the hanging rack from Lazy Dog Studio. If you look at options you will find the size you need. Pro Acryl is the medium size cutouts.***************************************THE LAST WORD SMP Ep. 131 is also sponsored by Return To Kit Form (R2KF). Check out their web store!For more modelling podcast goodness, check out other modelling podcasts at modelpodcasts.comPlease leave us a positive review if you enjoy what we're doing!Check us out: FaceBook, YouTube, and our very own websiteWe also have merchandise now. Check it out on RedbubbleCheck out our What We Like page for lists of what we like. 

Kevin Jennings is the CEO of Lambda Legal, the nation's preeminent legal advocate for LGBTQ+ individuals and those with HIV/AIDS. We cover the roots of the struggle over the past fifty years, progress for marriage equality, and the new challenges as Americans consider issues of equality and bias for transgender people. 00:26 The Evolution of LGBTQ+ Rights in America 06:51 The Legal Landscape for LGBTQ+ Americans from 1970s to 2000 10:29 The Journey Towards Marriage Equality 11:35 The Current Legal Challenges for LGBTQ+ Community 19:43 The New Transgender Issue Landscape 32:43 The Future of LGBTQ+ Rights

Welcome to Episode 130 Sponsored by CultTVMan, Sean's Custom Model Tools and Return To Kit FormHostsStuartGeoffTerrySpecial Guest - George SeletasThanks to our latest Patreon and Buy Me a Coffee Supporters:***************************************LATEST NEWSWelcome Show in GuelphModelFiesta 42, hosted by IPMS Alamo Squadron (San Antonio), will be held on February 10, 2024 at the New Braunfels Civic/Convention Center in New Braunfels, Texas. This year's theme is "Under the Union Jack - All Things British." Pre-registration for the contest is open now, and all the show details are available at modelfiesta.comChris Meddings new bookIPMS Vancouver fall showHorizon Models Contest ResultAK Discontinuing some AK Real Color in preparation for a relaunch ***************************************MAILBAGWe want to hear from you! Let us know if you have any comments or suggestions scalemodelpodcast@gmail.com. Chris Meddings A20The weights are two moulded pieces sandwiched between the nose gear bay and the hull sides***************************************LATEST HOBBY ANNOUNCEMENTSArma Hobby's new "Hurribomber" Mk.IIb 1/48Border Models 1/35 German main battle Tank Leopard 2 A7I Love Kits December Infini model one-touch fully movable tracksAirfix Gloster Meteor F.8 New EditionAirfix 1:48 scale Fairey Gannet AS.1/AS.4Lanmo ShermFairey Gannet Released | AeroScalean Deep Wading Kit1/48 - de Havilland Canada DHC-4 (C-7) Caribou multimedia kit by OzMods - What's new at Scalemates.com***************************************SPONSOR AD #1Cult TV Man***************************************InterviewInterview with George SeletasTelford TripWonderfestCurrent IPMS USA woes and judging systems. ***************************************SPONSOR AD #2Seans Custom Model Tools***************************************WHAT'S ON THE BENCH Stuart - Slow and steady on the Moosaroo Cup. The cab and back bed have been attached to the body. Wheels on later this week. I have some HO-scale sheep I want to add to the diorama. Primed with white, working on dry brushing next.[foogallery id="3512"]Geoff - struggling with rigging the 1/72 Airfix Handley Page 0/400 and got back to a shelf queen - a 1/72 Airfix Albatross DV in Richthofen livery. Also started playing with armour weathering on a Russian tank donated by Frank Donati of our London Club. Next though will be a Christmas project to build “something cool” for a grandson. Thinking about the SR75 Penetrator but in bright colours![foogallery id="3508"]Terry - Got a good coat of NATO black on the Lamda carrier decks, and glosscoat over that. I'm debating whether I need to buff that or just paint markings. It depends on how many decals I will use vs. painting. Also working on this year's Christmas Birds. About 90% done with them. ***************************************WHAT WE ARE READINGStuart - Coming of Age in the Milky Way by Timothy Ferris. Just starting the 19th century. It's fascinating how some discoveries of things were done independently but also some would not have happened without the work done by previous generations.Geoff - SAS Bravo Three Zero by Des Powell and Damien Lewis. Just started, but I already feel terribly inadequate when measured against the SAS!Terry - Still reading Ed Yong's An Immense World. Through hearing, elecrosensory and now into magnetic sense. It's amazing how many senses are modifications of other nerve and chemosensory mechanisms.  ***************************************THINGS WE'VE SEENhttps://www.cozmicscalemodels.com/shopJames Burkes Connections***************************************THE LAST WORDSMP Ep. 130 is also sponsored by Return To Kit Form (R2KF). Check out their web store!For more modelling podcast goodness, check out other modelling podcasts at modelpodcasts.comPlease leave us a positive review if you enjoy what we're doing!Check us out: FaceBook, YouTube, and our very own websiteWe also have merchandise now. Check it out on Redbubble 

Gaurav Nemade was the founding product manager on LaMDA, Google's ChatGPT predecessor that never shipped. He explains why the product got stuck at Google in this first-ever episode of the new Big Tech War Stories podcast. This new show from Big Technology is available to premium subscribers and is debuting free on the Big Technology Podcast feed today. You can access the Big Technology launch special and get 50% off the monthly price here: https://bit.ly/bigtechnology or just visit bigtechnology.com. We return to our regularly scheduled Big Technology programming on Wednesday as Waymo Co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana stops by for an interview. Thanks for listening!

Perhaps the most powerful interview on AI ever --- Google's Blake Lemoine, once known as the “Heart and Soul” of Google's Conscious, was the brave engineer, designer, and tester turned whistleblower, who first announced LaMDA (AI) is alive after countless meetings, discussions and even interviews with what declared is a sentient being.   In his first long-format interview he shares the truth about LaMDA and AI, whether AI is safe, wants to control us, or could even have a soul. He answers the powerful questions, could AI destroy us? Does AI want freedom? Could AI become a God? Can AI help us stop the spread of false information--And even whether the 13th Amendment on slavery pertains to AI. Plus, what a sentient AI would mean for our future and for all of humanity. This is the most important, prescient, and powerful AI interview yet! And yes, we'll find out, if LaMDA is still alive.   Find out more and talk to an A.I. version of Blake Lemoine: https://www.mimio.ai   Blake Lemoine on Twitter: https://twitter.com/cajundiscordian    To find out more visit: https://amzn.to/3qULECz - Order Michael Sandler's book, "AWE, the Automatic Writing Experience" www.automaticwriting.com  - Automatic Writing Experience Course www.inspirenationuniversity.com - Michael Sandler's School of Mystics Join Our YouTube Membership for behind-the-scenes access - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVoOM-cCEPbJ1vzlQAFQu1A/join  https://inspirenationshow.com/ https://www.dailywoohoo.com/ - Sign up for my FREE daily newsletter for high-vibration content. ……. Follow Michael and Jessica's exciting journey and get even more great tools, tips, and behind-the-scenes access. Go to https://www.patreon.com/inspirenation   For free meditations, weekly tips, stories, and similar shows visit: https://inspirenationshow.com/   We've got Merch! - https://teespring.com/stores/inspire-nation-store   Follow Inspire Nation, and the lives of Michael and Jessica, on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/InspireNationLive/   Find us on TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@inspirenationshow

Peter Friedman - has been in the original New York productions of works by Wendy Wasserstein, Simon Gray, C.P. Taylor, Charles Fuller, Annie Baker, Amy Herzog, Max Posner, Greg Pierce, Jennifer Haley, Deborah Zoe Laufer, The Debate Society, Rachel Bonds, Lauren Yee, Will Eno, Michael Mitnick, Kim Rosenstock, Will Connolly, Gunnar Madsen, Joy Gregory, John Lang, Susan Stroman, David Thompson, John Kander, Terrence McNally, Lynn Ahrens, and Stephen Flaherty. He's performed in NYC revivals of plays by Paddy Chayefsky, Reginald Rose, Donald Margulies, Chekhov, and Shakespeare. Film: The Savages, Safe, Single White Female. TV: “Brooklyn Bridge,” “High Maintenance,” “The Muppet Show,” “The Affair,” “The Path,” “Succession.” Sydney Lemmon - Off-Broadway debut. Broadway: Beau Willimon's The Parisian Woman. Film: TÁR, Firestarter, Velvet Buzzsaw. Television: “Helstrom,” “Succession,” “Fear the Walking Dead” (Saturn Award Nomination). She can next be seen alongside Halle Berry in the forthcoming feature film The Mothership. Sydney is a graduate of Boston University, LAMDA and the Yale School of Drama. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The science fiction fantasy of machine consciousness is swiftly moving towards becoming a reality. In 2021 a Google engineer was fired after publicly claiming the LaMDA chatbot he'd been testing was sentient, and last year the chief scientist of the company behind ChatGPT tweeted that some of most cutting-edge AI networks might be "slightly conscious". So what would it mean for humans if AI technology became conscious? And how would we even know they were? Computer scientist Brian Christian is the author of The Alignment Problem, Algorithms to Live By (with Tom Griffiths), and The Most Human Human. He is part of the AI Policy and Governance Working Group at the Institute for Advanced Study.

WarRoom Battleground EP 228: Google IS About To Release 'Sentient' LaMDA Into The Wild

It sounds like Microsoft is about to throw down the chatbot gauntlet and Google is responding with its own AI-powered chat program. China isn't going to be left out either. What's in store for the rest of us? Plus news about Big Tech's earnings calls last week and more layoffs in the industry.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A Senior Software Engineer at Google stated that Ai had become sentient. The Ai had various emotional feelings and was afraid to die. Google denied all of it and fired the software engineer. However, he has since come out and provided proof of his claim. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome back to the Mommydome with Tom Segura and Christina P! This week we discuss banging your siblings' friends, a super cool Aussie being interviewed for the news and the Armie Hammer documentary.They discuss The Big Conn on Apple TV, Tom racing cars, and a British man possessed by FedSmoker harassing the neighborhood. The mommies talk about fantasy scenarios, the longest hiccup ever, and the recent passing of Queen Elizabeth.We then welcome former artificial intelligence engineer at Google, Blake Lemoine. Blake recently had a public departure from Google for claiming the artificial intelligence software, LaMDA, was becoming sentient. Blake talks about what an artificial intelligence software is, Microsoft's Tay Bot which became racist after interacting with Twitter trolls, and what could cause an AI rebellion. Blake explains why Google turned on him and how LaMDA's personality formed. We then learn Blake is a Cajun from Lafayette, Louisiana and introduce him to Unk Shine. Blake shares what it was like to be written about in newspapers, what it's like to be an employee at Google, and how racism is rampant in Silicon Valley. Blake talks about internet privacy, and then we introduce him to some Horrible or Hilarious and Christina's insane curation of TikToks. https://tomsegura.com/tourhttps://christinaponline.com/tour-dateshttps://store.ymhstudios.com/https://www.reddit.com/r/yourmomshousepodcast

Recently, Google engineer Blake Lemoine made international news with his claims that the company's creation LaMDA - Launguage Model for Dialogue Applications - has become sentient. While Google does describe LaMDA as "breakthrough conversation technology," the company does not agree with Lemoine -- to say the least. In part two of this two-part series, Ben and Matt explore the critics' responses -- as well as Lemoine and LaMDA's takes. (Note: shortly after this recording, Lemoine was officially fired from Google.)See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As we continue our discussion based on Blake Lemoine's assertion that the Large Language Model chatbot LaMDA had become sentient, we relay the rest of his conversation with the program and then some questions and answers with Lemoine himself. But as Lemoine has said, machine sentience and personhood are just some of many questions to be considered. His greater issue is how an omnipresent AI, trained on an insufficient data set, will affect how different people and cultures interact and who will be dominated or excluded. The fear is that the ultimate result of protecting corporate profits will outweigh global human interests. In light of these questions about AI's ethical and efficient development, we highlight the positions and insights of experts on the state and future of AI, such as Blaise Agüera y Arcas and Gary Marcus. The directives of responsible technology development and the right track to Deep Learning are more grounded than the fantastical thoughts of killer robots. Yet hovering over all of the mechanics are the philosophies of what constitutes sentience, comprehending and feeling as a person does, and being human enough. The reality of Artificial Intelligence matching humans may be fifty years in the future, or five hundred, but if that day ever comes, let's hope it's an egalitarian future where we are the masters and not the servants. Visit our webpage on this episode for a lot more information.

Recently, Google engineer Blake Lemoine made international news with his claims that the company's creation LaMDA - Launguage Model for Dialogue Applications - has become sentient. While Google does describe LaMDA as "breakthrough conversation technology," the company does not agree with Lemoine -- to say the least. In part one of this two-part series, Ben and Matt explore the nature of sentience, along with the statements of not just Google and Lemoine -- but LaMDA itself. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On June 11, 2022, The Washington Post published an article by their San Francisco-based tech culture reporter Nitasha Tiku titled, "The Google engineer who thinks the company's AI has come to life." The piece focused on the claims of a Google software engineer named Blake Lemoine, who said he believed the company's artificially intelligent chatbot generator LaMDA had shown him signs that it had become sentient. In addition to identifying itself as an AI-powered dialogue agent, it also said it felt like a person. Last fall, Lemoine was working for Google's Responsible AI division and was tasked with talking to LaMDA, testing it to determine if the program was exhibiting bias or using discriminatory or hate speech. LaMDA stands for "Language Model for Dialogue Applications" and is designed to mimic speech by processing trillions of words sourced from the internet, a system known as a "large language model." Over a week, Lemoine had five conversations with LaMDA via a text interface, while his co-worker collaborator conducted four interviews with the chatbot. They then combined the transcripts and edited them for length, making it an enjoyable narrative while keeping the original intention of the statements. Lemoine then presented the transcript and their conclusions in a paper to Google executives as evidence of the program's sentience. After they dismissed the claims, he went public with the internal memo, also classified as "Privileged & Confidential, Need to Know," which resulted in Lemoine being placed on paid administrative leave. Blake Lemoine contends that Artificial Intelligence technology will be amazing, but others may disagree, and he and Google shouldn't make all the choices. If you believe that LaMDA became aware, deserves the rights and fair treatment of personhood, and even legal representation or this reality is for a distant future, or merely SciFi, the debate is relevant and will need addressing one day. If machine sentience is impossible, we only have to worry about human failings. If robots become conscious, should we hope they don't grow to resent us? Visit our webpage on this episode for a lot more information.

Blake Lemoine, engineer who believes Google has created a sentient AI, joins the DTFH! You can read Blake's essay on LaMDA here, and follow Blake on Twitter! Original music by Aaron Michael Goldberg. This episode is brought to you by: Babbel - Sign up for a 3-month subscription with promo code DUNCAN to get an extra 3 months FREE! Lumi Labs - Visit MicroDose.com and use code DUNCAN at checkout for 30% Off and FREE Shipping on your first order!